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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romantic, by May Sinclair
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Romantic
+
+Author: May Sinclair
+
+Release Date: August 25, 2004 [EBook #13292]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMANTIC ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Mary Meehan and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE ROMANTIC
+
+                             BY MAY SINCLAIR
+
+                                  1920
+
+
+
+
+_Every kind and beautiful thing on earth has been made so by some
+cruelty_.
+
+Saying of the Romantic
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+BOOK ONE Charlotte Redhead
+
+BOOK TWO John Roden Conway
+
+
+
+
+THE ROMANTIC
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+CHARLOTTE REDHEAD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+They turned again at the end of the platform.
+
+The tail of her long, averted stare was conscious of him, of his big,
+tweed-suited body and its behaviour, squaring and swelling and tightening
+in its dignity, of its heavy swing to her shoulder as they turned.
+
+She could stave off the worst by not looking at him, by looking at other
+things, impersonal, innocent things; the bright, yellow, sharp gabled
+station; the black girders of the bridge; the white signal post beside it
+holding out a stiff, black-banded arm; the two rails curving there, with
+the flat white glitter and sweep of scythes; pointed blades coming
+together, buried in the bend of the cutting.
+
+Small three-cornered fields, clean edged like the pieces of a puzzle, red
+brown and pure bright green, dovetailed under the high black bar of the
+bridge. She supposed you could paint that.
+
+Turn.
+
+Clear stillness after the rain. She caught herself smiling at the noise
+her boots made clanking on the tiles with the harsh, joyous candour that
+he hated. He walked noiselessly, with a jerk of bluff knickerbockered
+hips, raising himself on his toes like a cat.
+
+She could see him moving about in her room, like that, in the half
+darkness, feeling for his things, with shamed, helpless gestures. She
+could see him tiptoeing down her staircase, furtive, afraid. Always
+afraid they would be found out.
+
+That would have ruined him.
+
+Oh well--why should he have ruined himself for her? Why? But she had
+wanted, wanted to ruin herself for him, to stand, superb and reckless,
+facing the world with him. If that could have been the way of it.
+
+Turn.
+
+That road over the hill--under the yellow painted canopy sticking out
+from the goods station--it would be the Cirencester road, the Fosse Way.
+She would tramp along it when he was gone.
+
+Turn.
+
+He must have seen her looking at the clock. Three minutes more.
+
+Suddenly, round the bend, under the bridge, the train.
+
+He was carrying it off fairly well, with his tight red face and his stare
+over her head when she looked at him, his straight smile when she said
+"Good-bye and Good-luck!"
+
+And her silly hand clutching the window ledge. She let go, quick, afraid
+he would turn sentimental at the end. But no; he was settling down
+heavily in his corner, blinking and puffing over his cigar.
+
+That was her knapsack lying on the seat there. She picked it up and slung
+it over her shoulder.
+
+Cirencester? Or back to Stow-on-the-Wold? If only he hadn't come there
+last night. If only he had let her alone.
+
+She meditated. She would have to wire to Gwinnie Denning to meet her at
+Cirencester. She wondered whether Gwinnie's mother's lumbago would last
+over the week-end. It was Friday. Perhaps Gwinnie had started. Perhaps
+there would be a wire from her at the hotel.
+
+Going on to Cirencester when you wanted to be in Stow-on-the-Wold, what
+_was_ it but a cowardly retreat? Driven out of Stow-on-the-Wold by
+Gibson? Not she!
+
+Dusk at ten o'clock in the morning under the trees on the mile-long hill.
+You climbed up and up a steep green tunnel. The sun would be blazing at
+its mouth on the top. Nothing would matter. Certainly not this affair
+with Gibson Herbert. She could see clearly her immense, unique passion
+thus diminished. Surprising what a lot of it you could forget. Clean
+forget. She supposed you forgot because you couldn't bear to remember.
+
+But there were days that stood out; hours; little minutes that thrilled
+you even now and stung.
+
+This time, two years ago, that hot August. The day in the office when
+everything went wrong all at once and the clicking of her typewriter
+maddened him and he sent her out of his room.
+
+The day when he kept her over-time. The others had gone and they were
+there by themselves, the big man in his big room and she in her den, the
+door open between. Suddenly she saw him standing in the doorway, looking
+at her. She knew then. She could feel the blood rushing in her brain; the
+stabbing click of the typewriter set up little whirling currents that
+swamped her thoughts.
+
+Her wet fingers kept slipping from the keys. He came and took her in his
+arms. She lay back in his arms, crying. Crying because she was happy,
+because she knew.
+
+She remembered now what he had said then. "You must have known. You must
+have thought of me. You must have wanted me to take you in my arms." And
+her answer. "No. I didn't. I didn't think of it."
+
+And his smile. His unbelieving smile. He thought she was lying. He always
+thought people were lying. Women. He thought women always lied about what
+they wanted.
+
+The first time. In her Bloomsbury room, one evening, and the compact they
+made then, sitting on the edge of the sofa, like children, holding each
+other's hands and swearing never to go back on it, never to go back on
+themselves or on each other. If it ever had to end, a clean cut. No going
+back on that either.
+
+The first night, in the big, gloomy bedroom of the hotel in Glasgow. The
+thick, grey daylight oozing in at the window out of the black street; and
+Gibson lying on his back, beside her, sleeping, the sheet dragged
+sideways across his great chest. His innocent eyelids.
+
+And the morning after; the happiness. All day the queer, exalted feeling
+that she was herself, Charlotte Redhead, at last, undeceived and
+undeceiving.
+
+The day his wife came into the office. Her unhappy eyes and small,
+sharp-pointed face, shrinking into her furs. Her name was Effie.
+
+He had told her in the beginning that he had left off caring for his
+wife. They couldn't hurt her; she didn't care enough. She never had
+cared. There was another fellow. Effie would be all right.
+
+Yet, after she had seen Effie it had never been the same thing. She
+couldn't remember, quite, how it had been.
+
+She could remember the ecstasy, how it would come swinging through you,
+making you blind and deaf to impersonal, innocent things while it
+lasted. Even then there was always something beyond it, something you
+looked for and missed, something you thought would come that never came.
+There was something he did. She couldn't remember. That would be one of
+the things you wanted to forget. She saw his thick fingers at dessert,
+peeling the peaches.
+
+Perhaps his way of calling her "Poor Sharlie?" Things he let out--"I
+never thought I could have loved a girl with bobbed hair. A white and
+black girl." There must have been other girls then. A regular procession.
+Before he married Effie.
+
+She could see them. Pink and gold girls, fluffy and fat; girls with red
+hair; brown haired girls with wide slippery mouths. Then Effie. Then
+herself, with her thick bobbed mane and white face. And the beautiful
+mouth he praised so.
+
+Was it the disgust of knowing that you were only one of a procession? Or
+was it that Effie's sad, sharp face slipped between?
+
+And the end of it. The break-down, when Effie was ill.
+
+His hysterical cries. "My wife, Sharlie, my wife. We oughtn't to have
+done it....
+
+"... I can't forgive myself, Sharlie. I've been a brute, a beast, a
+stupid animal....
+
+"... When I think of what we've done to her--the little innocent
+thing--the awful unhappiness--I could kill myself."
+
+"Do you mean she knows?"
+
+"She thinks. That's bad enough. If she knew, it would kill her."
+
+"You said she wouldn't care. You said there was another man."
+
+"There wasn't."
+
+"You lied, then?"
+
+"Of course I lied. You wouldn't have come to me if I hadn't."
+
+"You told me you didn't care for her."
+
+He had met that with his "Well--what did you want?"
+
+She went over and over it, turning it round and round to see if there was
+any sort of light it would look a bit better in. She had been going to
+give him up so beautifully. The end of it was to have been wonderful,
+quiet, like a heavenly death, so that you would get a thrill out of that
+beauty when you remembered. All the beauty of it from the beginning,
+taken up and held together, safe at the end. You wouldn't remember
+anything else. And he had killed it, with his conscience, suddenly sick,
+whining, slobbering, vomiting remorse--Turning on her.
+
+"I can't think what you wanted with me. Why couldn't you have let
+me alone!"
+
+Her own voice, steady and hard. "If you feel dirty, go and wash yourself
+outside. Don't try and rub it off on me. I want to keep clean."
+
+"Isn't it a bit too late?"
+
+"Not if you clear out at once. This minute." He called her "a cruel
+little devil."
+
+She could forgive him for that. She could forgive him ending it in any
+beastly way he liked, provided he did end it. But not last night. To come
+crawling back, three months after, wanting to begin again. Thinking it
+was possible.
+
+There had been nothing worse than that. Except that one dreadful minute
+last year when he had wanted to raise her salary--afterwards--and she had
+said "What _for_?" And their faces had turned from each other, flaming
+with the fire of her refusal.
+
+What had he really thought of her? Did he think she wanted to get
+anything out of their passion? What could you want to get out of it, or
+give, but joy? Pure joy. Beauty.
+
+At the bend of the road the trees parted. A slender blue channel of sky
+flowed overhead between the green tops.
+
+If not joy, then truth; reality. The clear reality of yourself, Charlotte
+Redhead. Of Gibson Herbert. Even now it would be all right so long as you
+knew what it was and didn't lie about it.
+
+That evening in the office when he came to her--she could remember the
+feeling that shot up suddenly and ran over her and shook her brain,
+making her want him to take her in his arms. It was that. It had never
+been anything but that. She _had_ wanted him to take her, and he knew
+it. Only, if he hadn't come to her and looked at her she wouldn't have
+thought of it; she would have gone on working for him without
+thinking. That was what he didn't know, what he wouldn't have believed
+if you had told him.
+
+She had come to the top of the hill. At the crossroads she saw the grey
+front of her inn, the bow window jutting, small black shining panes
+picked out with the clean white paint of the frame-work.
+
+Upstairs their breakfast table stood in the window bow as they had left
+it. Bread he had broken on the greasy plate. His cup with the coffee he
+couldn't drink. Pathetic, if you hadn't remembered.
+
+"You might as well. If it isn't you, it'll be another woman, Sharlie. If
+it isn't me, it'll be another man."
+
+That was what he had thought her.
+
+It didn't matter.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+She stood at the five roads, swinging her stick, undecided.
+
+The long line of the beeches drew her, their heads bowed to the north as
+the south wind had driven them. The blue-white road drew her, rising,
+dipping and rising; between broad green borders under grey walls.
+
+She walked. She could feel joy breaking loose in her again, beating up
+and up, provoked and appeased by the strong, quick movement of her body.
+The joy she had gone to her lover for, the pure joy he couldn't give her,
+coming back out of the time before she knew him.
+
+Nothing mattered when your body was light and hard and you could feel the
+ripple and thrill of the muscles in your stride.
+
+She wouldn't have to think of him again. She wouldn't have to think of
+any other man. She didn't want any more of that again, ever. She could go
+on and on like this, by herself, without even Gwinnie; not caring a damn.
+
+If she had been cruel--if she had wanted to hurt Effie. She hadn't meant
+to hurt her.
+
+She thought of things. Places she had been happy in. She loved the high
+open country. Fancy sitting with Gibson in his stuffy office, day after
+day, for five years. Fancy going to Glasgow with him. Glasgow--
+
+No. No.
+
+She thought: "I can pretend it didn't happen. Nothing's happened. I'm
+myself. The same me I was before."
+
+Suddenly she stood still. On the top of the ridge the whole sky opened,
+throbbing with light, immense as the sky above a plain. Hills--thousands
+of hills. Thousands of smooth curves joining and parting, overlapping,
+rolling together.
+
+What did you want? What did you want? How could you want anything but
+this for ever?
+
+Across the green field she saw the farm. Tall, long-skirted elms standing
+up in a row before the sallow ricks and long grey barns. Under the loaded
+droop of green a grey sharp-pointed gable, topped by a stone ball. Four
+Scotch firs beside it, slender and strange.
+
+She stood leaning over the white gate, looking and thinking.
+
+Funny things, colts grazing. Short bodies that stopped at their
+shoulders; long, long necks hanging down like tails, pushing their heads
+along the ground. She could hear their nostrils breathing and the
+scrinch, scrinch of their teeth tearing the grass.
+
+You could be happy living on a farm, looking after the animals.
+
+You could learn farming. People paid.
+
+Suddenly she knew what she would do. She would do _that_. It wasn't
+reasonable to go on sitting in a stuffy office doing work you hated when
+you could pack up and go. She couldn't have stuck to it for five years if
+it hadn't been for Gibson--falling in love with him, the most
+unreasonable thing of all. She didn't care if you had to pay to learn
+farming. You had to pay for everything you learned. There were the two
+hundred pounds poor dear Daddy left, doing nothing. She could pay.
+
+She would go down to the farm now, this minute, and see if they
+would take her.
+
+As she crossed the field she heard the farmyard gate open and shut.
+
+The man came up towards her in the narrow path. He was looking at her as
+he came, tilting his head back to get her clear into his eyes under the
+shade of his slouched hat.
+
+She called to him. "Is this your farm?" And he halted.
+
+He smiled; the narrow smile of small, fine lips, with a queer, winged
+movement of the moustache, a flutter of dark down. She saw his eyes, hard
+and keen, dark blue, like the blade of a new knife.
+
+"No. I wish it was my farm. Why?"
+
+She could see now it wasn't. He was out tramping. The corner of a
+knapsack bulged over his right shoulder. Rough greenish coat and
+stockings--dust-coloured riding breeches--
+
+But there was something about him. Something tall and distant; slender
+and strange, like the fir-trees.
+
+"Because whoever's farm it is I want to see him."
+
+"You won't see him. There isn't anybody there."
+
+"Oh."
+
+He lingered.
+
+"Do you know who he is?" she said.
+
+"No. I don't know anything. I don't even know where I am. But I hope it's
+Bourton-on-the-Hill."
+
+"I'm afraid it isn't. It's Stow-on-the-Wold."
+
+He laughed and shifted his knapsack to his left shoulder, and held up his
+chin. His eyes slewed round, raking the horizon.
+
+"It's all right," she said. "You can get to Bourton-on-the-Hill. I'll
+show you." She pointed. "You see where that clump of trees is--like a
+battleship, sailing over a green hill. That's about where it is."
+
+"Thanks. I've been trying to get there all afternoon."
+
+"Where have you come from?"
+
+"Stanway. The other side of that ridge."
+
+"You should have kept along the top. You've come miles out of your way."
+
+"I like going out of my way. I did it for fun. For the adventure."
+
+You could see he was innocent and happy, like a child. She turned and
+went with him up the field.
+
+She wouldn't go to Bourton-on-the-Hill. She would go back to the hotel
+and see whether there was a wire for her from Gwinnie.... He liked going
+out of his way.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "there's _something_ the other side of that gate."
+
+"I hate to tell you. There's a road there. It's your way. The end of the
+adventure."
+
+He laughed again, showing small white teeth this time. The gate fell to
+with a thud and a click.
+
+"What do I do now?"
+
+"You go north. Straight ahead. Turn down the fifth or sixth lane on your
+right--you'll see the sign-post. Then the first lane on your left.
+That'll bring you out at the top of the hill."
+
+"Thanks. Thanks most awfully." He raised his hat, backing from her,
+holding her in his eyes till he turned.
+
+He would be out of sight now at the pace he was going; his young,
+slender, skimming stride.
+
+She stood on the top of the rise and looked round. He was halting down
+there at the bend by the grey cone of the lime kiln under the ash-tree.
+He had turned and had his face towards her. Above his head the battleship
+sailed on its green field.
+
+He began to come back, slowly, as if he were looking for something
+dropped on his path; then suddenly he stopped, turned again and was gone.
+
+There was no wire from Gwinnie. She had waited a week now. She
+wondered how long it would be before Gwinnie's mother's lumbago gave
+in and let her go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She knew it by heart now, the long, narrow coffee-room of the hotel. The
+draped chimney piece and little oblong gilt-framed mirror at one end; at
+the other the bowed window looking west on to the ash-tree and the
+fields; the two straight windows between, looking south on to the street.
+
+To-night the long table down the middle was set with a white cloth. The
+family from Birmingham had come. Father and mother, absurd pouter-pigeons
+swelling and strutting; two putty-faced unmarried daughters, sulking; one
+married one, pink and proper, and the son-in-law, sharp eyed and
+bald-headed. From their table in the centre they stared at her where she
+dined by herself at her table in the bow.
+
+Two days. She didn't think she could bear it one day more.
+
+She could see herself as she came down the room; her knitted silk sport's
+coat, bright petunia, flaming; thick black squares of her bobbed hair
+hanging over eyebrows and ears. And behind, the four women's heads
+turning on fat necks to look at her, reflected.
+
+Gwinnie's letter was there, stuck up on the mantel-piece. Gwinnie could
+come at the week-end; she implored her to hang on for five days longer,
+not to leave Stow-on-the-Wold till they could see it together. A letter
+from Gibson, repeating himself.
+
+The family from Birmingham were going through the door; fat faces
+straining furtively. If they knew--if they only knew. She stood, reading.
+
+She heard the door shut. She could look in the glass now and amuse
+herself by the sight they had stared at. The white face raised on the
+strong neck and shoulders. Soft white nose, too thick at the nuzzling
+tip. Brown eyes straight and wide open. Deep-grooved, clear-cut eyelids,
+heavy lashes. Mouth--clear-cut arches, moulded corners, brooding. Her
+eyes and her mouth. She could see they were strange. She could see they
+were beautiful.
+
+And herself, her mysterious, her secret self, Charlotte Redhead. It had
+been secret and mysterious to itself once, before she knew.
+
+She didn't want to be secret and mysterious. Of all things she hated
+secrecy and mystery. She would tell Gwinnie about Gibson Herbert when she
+came. She would have to tell her.
+
+Down at the end of the looking-glass picture, behind her, the bow window
+and the slender back of a man standing there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had got him clear by this time. If he went to-morrow he would
+stay, moving about forever in your mind. The young body, alert and
+energetic; slender gestures of hands. The small imperious head carried
+high. The spare, oval face with the straight-jutting, pointed chin.
+Honey-white face, thin dusk and bistre of eyelids and hollow temples
+and the roots of the hair. Its look of being winged, lifted up, ready
+to start off on an adventure. Hair brushed back in two sleek, dark
+wings. The straight slender nose, with the close upward wings of its
+nostrils (it wasn't Roman after all). Under it the winged flutter of
+his mouth when he smiled.
+
+Black eyebrows almost meeting, the outer ends curling up queerly, like
+little moustaches. And always the hard, blue knife-blade eyes.
+
+She knew his name the first day. He had told her. Conway. John
+Roden Conway.
+
+The family from Birmingham had frightened him. So he sat at her table in
+the bow. They talked. About places--places. Places they had seen and
+hadn't seen; places they wanted to see, and the ways you could get to
+places. He trusted to luck; he risked things; he was out, he said, for
+risk. She steered by the sun, by instinct, by the map in her head. She
+remembered. But you could buy maps. He bought one the next day.
+
+They went for long walks together. She found out the field paths. And
+they talked. Long, innocent conversations. He told her about himself. He
+came from Coventry. His father was a motor car manufacturer; that was why
+_he_ liked tramping.
+
+She told him she was going to learn farming. You could be happy all day
+long looking after animals. Swinging up on the big bare backs of cart
+horses and riding them to water; milking cows and feeding calves. And
+lambs. When their mothers were dead. They would run to you then, and
+climb into your lap and sit there--sucking your fingers.
+
+As they came in and went out together the family from Birmingham
+glared at them.
+
+"Did you see how they glared?"
+
+"Do you mind?" he said.
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"No more do I. It doesn't matter what people like that do. Their souls
+are horrible. They leave a glairy trail everywhere they go. If they were
+dead--stretched out on their death beds--you'd see their souls, like
+long, fat white slugs stretched out too, glued to their bodies.... You
+know what they think? They think we met each other on purpose. They think
+we're engaged."
+
+"I don't care," she said. "It doesn't matter what they think."
+
+They laughed at the silliness of the family from Birmingham. He had been
+there five days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I--, sa-ay--"
+
+Gwinnie's voice drawled in slow meditative surprise.
+
+The brooding curiosity had gone out of her face. Gwinnie's face, soft and
+schoolgirlish between the fawn gold bands and plaited ear bosses of her
+hair, the pink, pushed out mouth, the little routing nose, the thick grey
+eyes, suddenly turned on you, staring.
+
+Gwinnie had climbed up on to the bed to hear about it. She sat hunched up
+with her arms round her knees rocking herself on the end of her spine;
+and though she stared she still rocked. She was happy and excited because
+of her holiday.
+
+"It can't make any difference, Gwin. I'm the same Charlotte. Don't tell
+me you didn't know I was like that."
+
+"Of course I knew it. I know a jolly lot more than you think, kid."
+
+"I'm not a kid--if you _are_ two years older."
+
+"Why--you're not twenty-four yet.... It's the silliness of it beats me.
+Going off like that, with the first silly cuckoo that turns up."
+
+"He wasn't the first that turned up, I mean. He was the third that
+counted. There was poor Binky, the man I was engaged to. And Dicky
+Raikes; he wanted me to go to Mexico with him. Just for a lark, and I
+wouldn't. And George Corfield. _He_ wanted me to marry him. And I
+wouldn't."
+
+"Why didn't you?"
+
+"Because Dicky's always funny when you want to be serious and George is
+always serious when you want to be funny. Besides, he's so good. His
+goodness would have been too much for me altogether. Fancy _beginning_
+with George."
+
+"This seems to have been a pretty rotten beginning, anyway."
+
+"The beginning was all right. It's the end that's rotten. The really
+awful thing was Effie."
+
+"Look here--" Gwinnie left off rocking and swung herself to the edge of
+the bed. Her face looked suddenly mature and full of wisdom. "I don't
+believe in that Effie business. You want to think you stopped it because
+of Effie; but you didn't. You've got to see it straight.... It was his
+lying and funking that finished you. He fixed on the two things you
+can't stand."
+
+The two things. The two things.
+
+"I know what you want. You want to kill him in my mind, so that I shan't
+think of him any more. I'm not thinking. I only wanted you to know."
+
+"Does anybody else know?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well--don't you let them."
+
+Gwinnie slid to her feet and went to the looking-glass. She stood there a
+minute, pinning closer the crushed bosses of her hair. Then she turned.
+
+"What are you going to do with that walking-tour johnnie?"
+
+"John--Conway? You couldn't do anything with him if you tried. He's miles
+beyond all that."
+
+"All _what_?"
+
+"The rotten things people do. The rotten things they think. You're safe
+with him, Gwinnie. Safe. Safe. You've only to look at him."
+
+"I _have_ looked at him. Whatever you do, don't _tell_ him, Sharlie."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Charlotte sat on the top of the slope in the field below Barrow Farm.
+John Conway lay at her feet. The tall beeches stood round them in an
+unclosed ring.
+
+Through the opening she could see the farmhouse, three ball-topped
+gables, the middle one advancing, the front built out there in a huge
+door-place that carried a cross windowed room under its roof.
+
+Low heavy-browed mullions; the panes, black shining slits in the grey and
+gold of the stone. All their rooms. Hers and Gwinnie's under the near
+gable by the fir-trees, Mr. and Mrs. Burton's under the far gable by the
+elms, John's by itself in the middle, jutting out.
+
+She could see the shallow garden dammed up to the house out of the green
+field by its wall, spilling trails of mauve campanula, brimming with pink
+phlox and white phlox, the blue spires of the lupins piercing up through
+the froth.
+
+Sunday evening half an hour before milking-time. From September
+nineteen-thirteen to December--to March nineteen-fourteen, to June--she
+had been at the farm nine months. June--May--April. This time three
+months ago John had come.
+
+In the bottom of the field, at the corner by the yard-gate, under the
+elms, she could see Gwinnie astride over the tilted bucket, feeding the
+calves. It was Gwinnie's turn.
+
+She heard the house door open and shut. The Burtons came down the flagged
+path between the lavender bushes, leaving them to their peace before
+milking time.
+
+Looking down she saw John's eyes blinking up at her through their lashes.
+His chest showed a red-brown V in the open neck of his sweater. He had
+been quiet a long time. His voice came up out of his quietness, sudden
+and queer.
+
+"Keep your head like that one minute--looking down. I want your
+eyelids.... Now I know."
+
+"What?"
+
+"What you're like. You're like Jeanne d'Arc.... There's a picture--the
+photo of a stone head, I think--in a helmet, looking down, with
+big drooped eyelids. If it isn't Jeanne it ought to be. Anyhow it's
+you.... That's what's been bothering me. I thought it was just because
+you had black hair bobbed like a fifteen century page. But it isn't that.
+It's her forehead and her blunt nose, and her innocent, heroic chin. And
+the thick, beautiful mouth.... And the look--as if she could see behind
+her eyelids--dreadful things going to happen to her. All the butchery."
+
+"I don't see any dreadful things going to happen to me."
+
+"No. Her sight was second sight; and your sight is memory. You never
+forget things.... I shall call you Jeanne. You ought to wear armour and a
+helmet." His voice ceased and began again. "What are you thinking of?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't think much, ever."
+
+She was wondering what _he_ would think if he knew.
+
+She wondered what the farm would be like without him. Would it be what it
+was last autumn and winter and in the spring before he came? But she had
+been happy all that time without him, even in the hard, frost-biting
+winter. When you had gone through that you knew the worst of Barrow Farm.
+It made your face coarse, though.
+
+Joan of Arc was a peasant. No wonder she was beginning to look like her.
+If John went--
+
+"John, shall you stay on here?"
+
+"I don't know. I shall stick to farming if that's what you mean. Though
+it isn't what I wanted."
+
+"What did you want?"
+
+"To go into the Army."
+
+"Why didn't you then?"
+
+"They wouldn't have me. There's something wrong with my eyes.... So the
+land's got me instead."
+
+"Me too. We ought to have been doing this all our lives."
+
+"We'll jolly well have to. We shall never be any good indoors again."
+
+"Has old Burton said anything?"
+
+"I'm getting on. I can drive as straight a furrow as any man in
+Gloucestershire. I've told my father that. He detests me; but he'd say
+you ought to work up from the plough-tail, if you _must_ farm. He turned
+all of us through his workshops before he took us into the business. He
+liked to see us soaked in dirt and oil, crawling on our stomachs under
+his engines. He'd simply love to see me here standing up to my knees in
+wet cow-dung."
+
+"He won't mind your leaving him?"
+
+"Not if I make a good thing out of this. Anyhow he knows he can't keep me
+off it. If I can't fight I'll farm. It's in my blood and nerves and
+memory. He sits there selling motor cars, but his people were fighting
+men. They fought to get land; they fought to keep it. My mother's people,
+the Rodens, were yeoman farmers. That's why my furrow's so straight."
+
+"And that's why you came here?"
+
+"No. That isn't why."
+
+"Aren't you glad you came? Did you ever feel anything like the
+peace of it?"
+
+"It's not the peace of it I want, Charlotte,--Jeanne, I mean. It's
+the fight. Fighting with things that would kill you if you didn't.
+Wounding the earth to sow in it and make it feed you. Ploughing,
+Charlotte--Jeanne. Feeling the thrust and the drive through, and the
+thing listing over on the slope. Seeing the steel blade shine, and the
+long wounds coming in rows, hundreds of wounds, wet and shining."
+
+"What makes you think of wounds?"
+
+"I don't know. I see it like that. Cutting through."
+
+"I don't see it like that one bit. The earth's so kind, so beautiful. And
+the hills--look at them, the clean, quiet backs, smoothed with light. You
+could stroke them. And the fields, those lovely coloured fans opening and
+shutting."
+
+"They're lovely because of what's been done to them. If those hills had
+been left to themselves there'd have been nothing on them but trees.
+Think of the big fight with the trees, the hacking through, the cutting.
+The trunks staggering and falling. You'd begin with a little hole in the
+forest like that gap in the belt on the sky-line, and you'd go on hacking
+and cutting. You'd go on.... If you didn't those damned trees would come
+up round you and jam you between their trunks and crush you to red
+pulp.... Supposing this belt of beeches drew in and got tighter and
+tighter--No. There's nothing really kind and beautiful on this earth.
+Except your face. And even your face--"
+
+"My face?--"
+
+"_Could_ be cruel. But it never will be. Something's happened to it. Some
+cruelty. Some damnable cruelty."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Every kind and beautiful thing on earth, Jeanne, has been made so by
+some cruelty."
+
+"That's all rot. Utter rot. You don't know what you're talking
+about.... It's milking time. There's Gwinnie semaphoring. Do you know old
+Burton's going to keep us on? He'll pay us wages from this quarter. He
+says we were worth our keep from the third day."
+
+"Do you want to stay on here?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+"Very well then, so do I. That settles it."
+
+"Get up," she said, "and come along. Gwinnie's frantic."
+
+He sat up, bowed forwards, his hands hanging loose over his knees.
+She stood and looked down at him, at the arch of his long, slender
+back dropping to the narrow hips. She could feel the sudden crush of
+her breath in her chest and the sighing throb in her throat and her
+lips parting.
+
+He grasped the hands she stretched out to him at arms' length. She set
+her teeth and pressed her feet to the ground, and leaned back, her weight
+against his weight, tugging.
+
+He came up to his feet, alert, laughing at the heavy strength of her
+pull. As they ran down the field he still held, loosely, like a thing
+forgotten, her right hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through the long June night on her bed in the room under the gable--the
+hot room that smelt of plaster and of the apples stored in the loft
+behind it--she lay thinking.
+
+Gwinnie had turned her back, burrowing into her pillow with a final shrug
+of her hips. She was asleep now in her corner.
+
+"If I were you I wouldn't think about him, Sharlie"--She knew what
+Gwinnie meant. But thinking was one thing and caring was another.
+Thinking was the antidote to caring. If she had let her mind play freely
+over Gibson Herbert in the beginning--But Gibson stopped her thinking,
+and John Conway made her think. That was the difference.
+
+There was nothing about John that was like Gibson. Not a look, not a
+gesture, not the least thought in his mind. His mind was like his
+body, clean and cold and beautiful. Set on fire only by dreams; loving
+you in a dream, a dream that burned him up and left him cold to you.
+Cold and clean.
+
+There were things she laid up against him, the poor dear; a secret hoard
+of grievances now clear to her in the darkness; she found herself turning
+them over and over, as if positively her mind owed his romantic apathy a
+grudge. Little things she remembered. Three things.
+
+Yesterday in the hayfield, John pitching hay on to the cart, and she
+standing on the top of the load, flattening down the piles as he swung
+them up. Gwinnie came with a big fork, swanking, for fun, trying to pitch
+a whole haycock. In the dark of the room she could see Gwinnie's little
+body straining back from the waist, her legs stiffening, her face pink
+and swollen; and John's face looking at Gwinnie.
+
+She shouted down at him, "Why can't you _take_ the damned thing? She'll
+break her back with it." And he shouted up, "That's her look-out." (But
+he took it.) He didn't like Gwinnie.
+
+That time. And the time Cowslip calved, the darling choosing the one
+night old Burton was away and Jim down with flu. She had to hold the
+lantern. Straw littered in the half-lighted shed. Cowslip swinging her
+bald-faced head round to you, her humble, sorrowful eyes imploring,
+between her groans and the convulsive heavings of her flanks. A noise
+between a groan and a bellow, a supreme convulsion. The dark wall, the
+white funnel of light from the lantern, and John's face in the flash....
+
+But he had been sorry for Cowslip. Going out with the lantern afterwards
+she had found him in the yard, by the wall, bent double, shivering and
+retching. And she had sung out to him "Buck up, John. She's licked it
+clean. It's the dearest little calf you ever saw."
+
+Pity. Pity could drag your face tight and hard, like Burton's when his
+mare, Jenny, died of colic.
+
+But before that--the night they went to Stow Fair together; crossing
+the street at the sharp turn by the church gate, something happened.
+They hadn't heard the motor car coming; it was down on them before they
+could see it, swerving round her side of the street. He had had his
+hand tight on her arm to steer her through the crowd. When the car
+came ... when the car came ... he let go and jumped clean to the curb.
+She could feel the splash-board graze her thigh, as she sprang clear of
+it, quick, like a dog.
+
+She was sure he jumped first. She was sure he hadn't let her go before
+the car came. She could see the blaze of the lamps and feel his grip
+slacken on her arm.
+
+She wasn't sure. He couldn't have jumped. He couldn't have let go. Of
+course he hadn't. She had imagined it. She imagined all sorts of things.
+If she could make them bad enough she would stop thinking about him; she
+would stop caring. She didn't want to care.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Charlotte--when I die, that's where I'd like to be buried."
+
+Coming back from Bourton market they had turned into the churchyard on
+the top of Stow-hill. The long path went straight between the stiff yew
+cones through the green field set with graves.
+
+"On the top, so high up you could almost breathe in your coffin here."
+
+"I don't want to breathe in my coffin. When I'm dead I'm dead, and when
+I'm alive I'm alive. Don't talk about dying."
+
+"Why not? Think of the gorgeous risk of it--the supreme toss up. After
+all, death's the most thrilling thing that happens."
+
+"Whose death?"
+
+"My death."
+
+"Don't _talk_ about it."
+
+"Your death then."
+
+"Oh, mine--"
+
+"Our death, Jeanne."
+
+He turned to her in the path. His mouth was hard now, but his eyes shone
+at her, smiling, suddenly warm, suddenly tender.
+
+She knew herself then; she knew there was one cruelty, one brutality
+beyond bearing, John's death.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+John had gone away for a week.
+
+If she could tire herself out, and not dream. In the slack days between
+hay-time and harvest she was never tired enough. She lay awake, teased by
+the rucking of the coarse hot sheet under her back, and the sweat that
+kept on sliding between her skin and her night gown. And she dreamed.
+
+She was waiting in the beech ring on the top of the field. Inside the
+belt of the tree trunks a belt of stones grew up, like the wall of the
+garden. It went higher and higher and a hole opened in it, a long slit.
+She stuck her head through the hole to look out over the hills.
+
+This was the watch-tower. She knew, as if she remembered it, that John
+had told her to go up and wait for him there; she was keeping watch for
+him on the tower.
+
+Grey mist flowed over the field like water. He was down there in the
+field. If she went to him he would take her in his arms.
+
+She was walking now on the highway to Bourton-on-the-Hill. At the dip
+after the turn shallow water came out of the grass borders and ran
+across the road, cold to her naked feet. She knew that something was
+happening to John. He had gone away and she had got to find him and
+bring him back. She had got to find the clear hill where the battleship
+sailed over the field.
+
+Instead of the ship she found the Barrow Farm beeches. They stood in a
+thick ring round a clearing of grey grass and grey light. John was
+standing there with a woman. She turned and showed her sharp face, the
+colour of white clay, her long evil nose, her eyes tilted corner and the
+thin tail of her mouth, writhing. That was Miss Lister who had been in
+Gibson's office. She had John now.
+
+Forms without faces, shrouded white women, larvae slipped from the black
+grooves of the beech trunks; they made a ring round him with their
+bodies, drew it in tighter and tighter. The grey light beat like a pulse
+with the mounting horror.
+
+She cried out his name, and her voice sounded tragic and immense; sharp
+like a blade of lightning screaming up to the top of the sky. A black
+iron curtain crashed down before her and cut off the dream.
+
+Gwinnie looked up over the crook of her knee from the boot she was
+lacing.
+
+"You made no end of a row in your sleep, Sharlie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had dreamed about him again, the next night. He was walking with her
+on the road from the town to the Farm. By the lime kiln at the turn he
+disappeared. He had never been there, really.
+
+She had gone out to look for him. The road kept on curling round like a
+snake, bringing her back and back to the white gate of the Farm.
+
+When she got through the gate she stepped off the field on to the low
+bridge over a black canal. The long, sharp-pointed road cut straight as a
+dyke through the flat fields, between two lines of slender trees, tall
+poles with tufted tops.
+
+She knew she was awake now because the light whitened and the wind moved
+in the tree tufts and the road felt hard under her feet. When she came to
+the village, to the long grey walls with narrow shutters, she knew John
+was there. He came down the street towards the canal bridge. A group of
+women and children walked with him, dressed in black. Dutch women. Dutch
+babies. She could see their overalls and high caps and large, upturned
+shoes very black and distinct in the white light. This was real.
+
+They pointed their fingers and stared at her with secretive, inimical
+faces. Terror crept in over the street, subtle, drifting and penetrating
+like an odour.
+
+John's face was happy and excited; that was how she knew him. His face
+was real, its happiness and excitement were real. But as he passed her it
+changed; it turned on her with a look she didn't know. Eyes of hatred,
+eyes that repudiated and betrayed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The third night; the third dream.
+
+She had lost John and was looking for him; walking a long time through a
+country she could no longer see or remember. She came out of blank space
+to the river bridge and the red town. She could see the road
+switchbacking over the bridge and turning sharp and slanting up the river
+bank to the ramparts.
+
+Red fortresses above the ramparts, a high red town above the fortresses,
+a thin red tower above the town. The whole thing looked dangerous and
+unsteady, as if any minute it would topple over. She knew John was there.
+Something awful was happening to him, and he wanted her.
+
+When she stepped on the bridge the river swelled and humped itself up to
+the arch. It flooded. The bridge walls made a channel for the gush. It
+curled over the bank and came curving down the slant road from the
+ramparts, heavy and clear, like melted glass.
+
+She climbed up and up through the water and round behind the fortress to
+the street at the top. She could see the thin tower break and lean
+forward like a red crane above the houses. She had to get to the top
+before the street fell down. John was shut up in the last house. She ran
+under the tower as it fell.
+
+The house stood still, straight and tall. John was lying in the dark room
+behind the closed shutters. He wanted her. She could hear him calling to
+her "Jeanne! Jeanne!" She couldn't see in. She couldn't open the door.
+
+"Jeanne!"
+
+The wall split off and leaned forward.
+
+She woke suddenly to the tapping and splashing of the rain.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Feeding time and milking time were done; in his jutting room over the
+door-place John was washing and dressing for Sunday evening. He called
+out to her through his window, "Go up to our seat and wait for me there."
+
+He had come back again, suddenly, that morning, a day before they had
+expected him.
+
+Charlotte came out of the hot field into the cool room of the beech ring.
+She sniffed up the clean, sharp smell of sap from the rough seat that she
+and John had put up there, sawing and hacking and hammering all Sunday
+afternoon. Every evening when the farm work was done they would sit there
+together, inside the round screen of the beeches.
+
+The farm people wouldn't disturb them; not even Mr. Burton, now, looking
+in, smiling the fat, benevolent smile that blessed them, and going away;
+the very calves were so well used to them that they had left off pushing
+their noses through the tree trunks and staring.
+
+John's window faced her where she sat; she could see his head passing and
+passing across the black window space. To her sharp, waiting soul Barrow
+Farm took on a sudden poignant and foreign beauty. The house was yellow
+where the rain had soaked it, gold yellow like a sun-struck southern
+house, under the black plume of the firs, a yellow that made the sky's
+blue solid and thick. The grass, bright green after the rain, stretched
+with the tight smoothness of velvet over the slopes and ridges of the
+field. A stripe of darker green, where their feet had trodden down the
+blades, led straight as a sheep's track from the garden gate to the
+opening of the ring.
+
+To think that she had dreamed bad dreams in a place like this. She
+thought: "There must be something wrong about me, anyhow, to dream bad
+dreams about John."
+
+John was coming up the field, walking slowly, his hands thrust in his
+pockets, his eyes fixed steadily on a point in front of him that his mind
+didn't see, drawn back in some intense contemplation. He strolled into
+the ring so slowly that she had time to note the meditative gestures of
+his shoulders and chin. He stood beside her, very straight and tall, not
+speaking, still hiding his hands in his pockets, keeping up to the last
+minute his pose of indestructible tranquillity. He was so close that she
+could hear his breathing and feel his coat brushing her shoulder.
+
+He seated himself, slowly, without a break in the silence of his
+meditation.
+
+She knew that something wonderful and beautiful was going to happen. It
+had happened; it was happening now, growing more certain and more real
+with every minute that she waited for John to say something. If nothing
+changed, if this minute that she was living now prolonged itself, if it
+went on for ever and ever, that would be happiness enough.
+
+If she could keep still like this for ever--Any movement would be
+dangerous. She was afraid almost to breathe.
+
+Then she remembered. Of course, she would have to _tell_ him.
+
+She could feel the jerk and throb in John's breathing, measuring off the
+moments of his silence. Her thoughts came and went. "When he says he
+cares for me I shall have to tell him"--"This is going on for ever. If he
+cared for me he would have said it before now."--"It doesn't matter. He
+can care or not as he likes. Nothing can stop my caring."
+
+Then she was aware of her will, breaking through her peace, going out
+towards him, fastening on his mind to make him care; to make him say he
+cared, now, this minute. She was aware of her hands, clenched and
+unclenched, pressing the sharp edge of the seat into their palms as she
+dragged back her will.
+
+She was quiet now.
+
+John was looking at his own loose clasped hands and smiling. "Yes," he
+said, "yes. Yes." It was as if he had said, "This will go on. Nothing
+more than this can ever happen. But as long as we live it will go on."
+
+She had a sense almost of relief.
+
+"Charlotte--"
+
+"John--"
+
+"You asked me why I came here. You must have known why."
+
+"I didn't. I don't."
+
+"Can't you think?"
+
+"No, John. I've left off thinking. _My_ thinking's never any use."
+
+"If you _did_ think you'd know it was you."
+
+"_Me_?"
+
+"If it wasn't you just at first it was your face. There are faces that do
+things to you, that hurt you when they're not there. Faces of people you
+don't know in the least. You see them once and they never let you alone
+till you've seen them again. They draw you after them, back and back.
+You'd commit any sin just to see them again once....
+
+"... You've got that sort of face. When I saw you the first time--Do
+you remember? You came towards me over the field. You stopped and
+spoke to me."
+
+"Supposing I hadn't?"
+
+"It wouldn't have mattered. I'd have followed you just the same. Wherever
+you'd gone I'd have gone, too. I very nearly turned back then."
+
+She remembered. She saw him standing in the road at the turn.
+
+"I knew I had to see you again. But I waited two days to make sure. Then
+I came ...
+
+"... And when I'd gone I kept on seeing your face. It made me come back
+again. And the other day--I tried to get away from you. I didn't mean to
+come back; but I had to. I can't stand being away from you. And yet--
+
+"... Oh well--there it is. I had to tell you ... I couldn't if I didn't
+trust you."
+
+"You tried to get away from me--You didn't mean to come back."
+
+"I tell you I _had_ to. It's no use trying."
+
+"But you didn't want to come back.... _That's_ why I dreamed about you."
+
+"Did you dream about me?"
+
+"Yes. Furiously. Three nights running. I dreamed you'd got away and when
+I'd found you a black thing came down and cut you off. I dreamed you'd
+got away again, and I met you in a foreign village with a lot of foreign
+women, and you looked at me and I knew you hated me. You wouldn't know
+me. You went by without speaking and left me there."
+
+"My God--you thought I could do that?"
+
+"I dreamed it. You don't think in dreams. You feel. You see things."
+
+"You see things that don't exist, that never can exist, things you've
+thought about people. If I thought that about myself, Jeanne, I'd blow my
+brains out now, so that it shouldn't happen."
+
+"That wasn't the worst dream. The third was the worst. You were in a
+dreadful, dangerous place. Something awful was happening, and you wanted
+me, and I couldn't get to you."
+
+"No, that wasn't the worst dream. I _did_ want you, and you knew it."
+
+She thought: "He cares. He doesn't want to care, but he does. And he
+trusts me. I shall have to tell him ..."
+
+"There's something," she said, "I've got to tell you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He must have known. He must have guessed.
+
+He had listened with a gentle, mute attention, as you listen to a story
+about something that you remember, that interests you still, his eyes
+fixed on his own hands, his clear, beautiful face dreamy and inert.
+
+"You see," he said, "you did trust me. You wouldn't tell me all that if
+you didn't."
+
+"Of course I trust you. I told you because you trusted me. I thought--I
+thought you ought to know. I daresay you did know--all the time."
+
+"No. No, I didn't. I shouldn't have believed it was in you."
+
+"It isn't in me now. It's gone clean out of me. I shall never want that
+sort of thing again."
+
+"I know _that_." He said it almost irritably. "I mean I shouldn't have
+thought you could have cared for a brute like that.... But the brutes
+women _do_ care for ..."
+
+"I suppose I did care. But I don't feel as if I'd cared. I don't feel as
+if it had ever really happened. I can't believe it did. You see, I've
+forgotten such a lot of it. I couldn't have believed that once, that you
+could go and do a thing like that and forget about it. You'd have thought
+you'd remember it as long as you lived."
+
+"You couldn't live if you remembered...."
+
+"Oh, John, do you think it was as horrible as all that?"
+
+His face moved, flashed into sudden passion.
+
+"I think _he_ was as horrible as that. He makes it
+horrible--inconceivably horrible."
+
+"But--he wasn't."
+
+"You've told me. He was cruel to you. And he lied and funked."
+
+"It wasn't like him--it wasn't _like_ him to lie and funk. It was my
+fault. I made the poor thing jumpy. I let him run such whopping risks.
+_The_ horrible thing is thinking what I made him."
+
+"He was a liar and a coward, Charlotte; a swine."
+
+"I tell you he _wasn't_. Oh, why are we so beastly hard on each other?
+Everybody's got their breaking-point. I don't lie about the things he
+lied about; I don't funk the things he funked. But when my time comes I
+daresay I shall funk and lie."
+
+"Charlotte--are you sure you don't care for him?"
+
+"Of course I'm sure. I told you I'd forgotten all about it. _This_ is
+what I shall remember all my life. Your being here, my being with you.
+It's the _real_ thing."
+
+"You wouldn't want to go back?"
+
+"To him?"
+
+"No. To that sort of thing."
+
+"You mean with--just anybody?"
+
+"I mean with--somebody you cared about. Could you do without it and go
+on caring?"
+
+"Yes. If _he_ could. If he could go on. But he wouldn't."
+
+"'He' wouldn't, Charlotte. But _I_ would.... You know I _do_ care for
+you?"
+
+"I thought you _did_--I mean I thought you were beginning to. That's why
+I told you what happened, though I knew you'd loathe me."
+
+"I don't. I'm glad you told me. I'm glad it happened. I mean I'm glad
+you worked it off on him.... You got it over; you've had your
+experience; you know all about it; you know how long that sort of thing
+lasts and how it ends. The baseness, the cruelty of it ... I'm like you,
+Charlotte, I don't want any more of it.... When I say I care for you I
+mean I want to be with you, to be with you _always_. I'm not happy when
+you're not there....
+
+"... I say, I wish you'd leave this place and come away and live with me
+somewhere."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"There's my farm. My father's going to give me one if I stick to
+this job. We could run it together. There are all sorts of jolly
+things we could do together.... Would you like to live with me,
+Charlotte, on my farm?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I mean--live with me without _that_."
+
+"Yes; without that."
+
+"It isn't that I don't care for you. It's because I care so awfully, so
+much more than anybody else could. I want to go on caring, and it's the
+only way. People don't know that. They don't know what they're
+destroying with their blind rushing together. All the delicate,
+exquisite sensations. Charlotte, I can get all the ecstasy I want by
+just sitting here and looking at you, hearing your voice, touching
+you--like this." His finger-tips brushed the bare skin of her arm. "Even
+thinking of you ...
+
+"... And all that would go. Everything would go....
+
+"... But our way--nothing could end it."
+
+"I can see one thing that would end it. If you found somebody you really
+cared about."
+
+"Oh _that_--You mean if I--It wouldn't happen, and if it did, what
+difference would it make?"
+
+"You mean you'd come back?"
+
+"I mean I shouldn't have left you."
+
+"Still, you'd have gone to her. John, I don't think I could bear it."
+
+"You wouldn't have to bear it long. It wouldn't last."
+
+"Why shouldn't it?"
+
+"Because--You don't understand, Charlotte--if I know a woman wants me, it
+makes me loathe her."
+
+"It wouldn't, if you wanted _her_."
+
+"That would be worse. I should _hate_ her then if she made me go to her."
+
+"You don't know."
+
+"Oh, don't I!"
+
+"You can't, if you feel like that about it."
+
+"You say you feel like that about it yourself."
+
+"That's because I've been through it."
+
+"Do you suppose," he said, "I haven't?"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+JOHN RODEN CONWAY
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+It was an hour since they had left Newhaven.
+
+The boat went steadily, inflexibly, without agitation, cutting the small,
+crisp waves with a sound like the flowing of stiff silk. For a moment,
+after the excited rushing and hooting of the ambulance car, there had
+been something not quite real about this motion, till suddenly you caught
+the rhythm, the immense throb and tremor of the engines.
+
+Then she knew.
+
+She was going out, with John and Gwinnie Denning and a man called Sutton,
+Dr. Sutton, to Belgium, to the War. She wondered whether any of them
+really knew what it would be like when they got there.--She was vague,
+herself. She thought of the war mostly in two pictures: one very distant,
+hanging in the air to her right, colourless as an illustration in the
+papers, grey figures tumbled in a grey field, white puff-bursts of
+shrapnel in a grey sky: and one very near; long lines of stretchers,
+wounded men and dead men on stretchers, passing and passing before her.
+She saw herself and John carrying a stretcher, John at the head and her
+at the foot and Gwinnie and Dr. Sutton with another stretcher.
+
+Nothing for her and John and Gwinnie but field work; the farm had spoiled
+them incurably for life indoors. But it had hardened their muscles and
+their nerves, it had fitted them for the things they would have to do.
+The things they would have to see. There would be blood; she knew there
+would be blood; but she didn't see it; she saw white, very white
+bandages, and greyish white, sallow-white faces that had no features that
+she knew. She hadn't really thought so very much about the war; there had
+been too many other things to think about. Their seven weeks' training at
+Coventry, the long days in Roden and Conway's motor works, the long
+evenings in the ambulance classes; field practice in the meadow that
+John's father had lent to the Red Cross; runs along the Warwickshire
+roads with John sitting beside her, teaching her to steer and handle the
+heavy ambulance car. An endless preparation.
+
+And under it all, like a passion, like a hidden illness, their
+impatience, their intolerable longing to be out there.
+
+If there had been nothing else to think about there was John. Always
+John. Not that you could think about him without thinking about the war;
+he was so thoroughly mixed up with it; you couldn't conceive him as left
+out of it or as leaving himself out. It had been an obsession with him,
+to get into it, to get into it at once, without waiting. That was why
+there was only four of them. He wouldn't wait for more volunteers. They
+could get all the volunteers they wanted afterwards; and all the cars,
+his father would send out any number. She suspected John of not really
+wanting the volunteers, of not even wanting Gwinnie and Dr. Sutton. She
+could see he would have liked to have gone with her alone. Queer, that so
+long as she had thought he would be going without her, she had been
+afraid; she had felt certain he would be killed or die of wounds. The one
+unbearable thing was that John should die. But after it had been settled
+that she was to go with him as his chauffeur she hadn't been afraid any
+more. It was as if she knew that she would keep him safe. Or perhaps all
+the time she had been afraid of something else. Of separation. She had
+had visions of John without her in another country; they were coloured,
+vaguely, with the horror of her dreams. It had been just that. Anyhow,
+she hadn't thought any more about John's dying.
+
+It was the old man, his father, who had made her think of it now.
+
+She could see him, the grey, kind, silent man, at the last minute,
+standing on the quay and looking at John with a queer, tight look as
+though he were sorry about something--oh, but unbearably sorry about
+something he'd thought or said or done. He was keeping it all in, it was
+a thing he couldn't speak about, but you could see it made him think John
+wasn't coming back again.
+
+He had got it into his head that she was going out because of John.
+She remembered, before that, his kind, funny look at her when he said
+to John, "Mind you take care of her," and John's "No fear," and her
+own "That's not what he's going out for." She had a slight pang when
+she thought of John's father. He had been good to Gwinnie and to her
+at Coventry.
+
+But as for going out because of John, whether he went or not she would
+have had to go, so keen that she hated those seven weeks at Coventry,
+although John had been there.
+
+With every thud of the engines her impatience was appeased.
+
+And all the time she could hear Gwinnie's light, cool voice explaining to
+Dr. Sutton that the British Red Cross wouldn't look at them and their
+field ambulance, but the Belgians, poor things, you know, weren't in a
+position to refuse. They would have taken almost anything.
+
+Her mind turned to them: to Gwinnie, dressed in their uniform, khaki
+tunic and breeches and puttees, her fawn-coloured overcoat belted close
+round her to hide her knees. Gwinnie looked stolid and good, with her
+face, the face of an innocent, intelligent routing animal, stuck out
+between the close wings of her motor cap and the turned-up collar of her
+coat. She would go through it all right. Gwinnie was a little plodder.
+
+She would plod through the war as she had plodded through her training,
+without any fear of tests.
+
+And Dr. Sutton. From time to time she caught him looking at her across
+the deck. When Gwinnie's talk dropped he made no effort to revive it, but
+stood brooding; a square, thick-set man. His head leaned forward a little
+from his heavy shoulders in a perpetual short-sighted endeavour to look
+closer; you could see his eyes, large and clear under the watery wash of
+his glasses. His features, slightly flattened, were laid quietly back on
+his composed, candid face; the dab of docked moustache rising up in it
+like a strange note of wonder, of surprise.
+
+There, he was looking at her again. But whether he looked or listened, or
+stood brooding, his face kept still all the time, still and sad. His
+mouth hardly moved as he spoke to Gwinnie.
+
+She turned from him to the contemplation of their fellow passengers. The
+two Belgian boy scouts in capes and tilted caps with tassels bobbing over
+their foreheads; they tramped the decks, seizing attention by their gay,
+excited gestures. You could see that they were happy.
+
+The group, close by her in the stern, establishing itself there apart,
+with an air of righteous possession: five, six, seven men, three young,
+four middle-aged, rather shy and awkward, on its fringe. In its centre
+two women in slender tailor-made suits and motor veils, looking like
+bored uninterested travellers used to the adventure.
+
+They were talking to a little man in shabby tweeds and an olive-green
+velvet hat too small for his head. His smooth, innocent pink face carried
+its moustache like an accident, a mistake. Once, when he turned, she met
+the arched stare of small china-blue eyes; it passed over her without
+seeing, cold, dreamy, indifferent.
+
+She glanced again at his women. The tall one drew you every time by her
+raking eyes, her handsome, arrogant face, the gesture of her small head,
+alert and at the same time set, the predatory poise of an enormous bird.
+But the other one was--rather charming. Her features had a curious, sweet
+bluntness; her eyes were decorations, deep-set blue in the flushed gold
+of her sunburn. The little man straddled as he talked to them, bobbing
+forward now and then, with a queer jerking movement from his hips.
+
+She wondered what they were and decided that they were part of the
+Commission for Relief in Belgium, bound for Ostend.
+
+All those people had the look that John had, of having found what they
+had wanted, of being satisfied, appeased. Even Sutton had it, lying on
+the top of his sadness, like a light. They felt precisely as she was
+feeling--all those people.
+
+And through her wonder she remained aware of John Conway as he walked the
+deck, passing and passing in front of her.
+
+She got up and walked with him.
+
+The two women stared at them as they passed. One, the tall one, whispered
+something to the other.
+
+"John--do my knees show awfully as I walk?"
+
+"No. Of course they don't. Gwinnie's do. She doesn't know what to do
+with them."
+
+He looked down at her and smiled.
+
+"I like you. I like you in that cap. You look as if you were sailing fast
+against a head wind, as if you could cut through anything."
+
+Their turn brought them again under the women's eyes. He took her arm and
+drew her aside to the rail of the boat's stern. They stood there,
+watching the wake boiling and breaking and thinning, a white lace of
+froth on the glassy green. Sutton passed them.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" she said.
+
+"The War. He's got it on his mind. It's no use taking it like that,
+Jeanne, as one consummate tragedy ... How are _you_ feeling about it?"
+
+"I don't think I'm feeling anything--except wanting to get there. And
+wanting--wanting frightfully--to help."
+
+"Unless you can go into it as if it was some tremendous, happy
+adventure--That's the only way to take it. I shouldn't be any good if I
+didn't feel it was the most _romantic_ thing that ever happened to
+me.... To have let everything go, to know that nothing matters, that it
+doesn't matter if you're killed, or mutilated ... Of course I want to
+help, but that would be nothing without the gamble. The danger."
+
+He stopped suddenly in his turning and held her with his shining,
+excited eyes.
+
+"War's the most romantic thing that ever happened ... False romance, my
+father calls it. Jolly little romance about _him_. He'll simply make pots
+of money out of the war, selling motors to the Government."
+
+"It's rather--romantic of him to give us those two ambulances, and
+pay for us."
+
+"_Is_ it? Think of the kudos he gets out of it, and the advertisement for
+Roden and Conway, the stinking paragraphs he'll put in the papers about
+himself: 'His second son, Mr. John Roden Conway, is taking out two Roden
+field ambulance cars which he will drive himself--'Mr. John Roden Conway
+and his field ambulance car. A Roden, 30 horse power.' He makes me sick."
+
+She saw again, with a renewal of her pang, the old man, the poor, kind
+man. Perhaps he wouldn't put the paragraphs in the papers.
+
+"False romance. He lied. There's no such thing as false romance. Romance
+is a state of mind. A state of mind can't be false or true. It simply
+exists. It hasn't any relation to reality. It _is_ reality, the most real
+part of us. When it's dead we're dead."
+
+"Yes."
+
+But it was funny to _talk_ about it. About romance and danger. It made
+her hot and shy. She supposed that was because she couldn't take things
+in. Her fatheadedness. It was easy not to say things if you didn't feel
+them. The more John felt them the more he had to say them. Besides, he
+never said them to anybody but her. It was really saying them to himself,
+a quiet, secret thinking.
+
+He stood close, close in front of her, tall and strong and handsome in
+his tunic, knee breeches and puttees. She could feel the vibration of his
+intense, ardent life, of his excitement. And suddenly, before his young
+manhood, she had it again, the old feeling, shooting up and running over
+her, swamping her brain. She wondered with a sort of terror whether he
+would see it in her face, whether if she spoke he would hear it
+thickening her throat. He would loathe her if he knew. She would loathe
+herself if she thought she was going into the war because of that,
+because of him. Women did. She remembered Gibson Herbert. Glasgow.... But
+this was different. The sea was in it, magic was in it and romance. And
+if she had to choose between John and her wounded it should not be John.
+She had sworn that before they started. Standing there close beside him
+she swore again, secretly to herself, that it should not be John.
+
+John glanced at Sutton as he passed them.
+
+"I'd give my soul to be a surgeon," he said. "That's what I wanted."
+
+"You wanted to be a soldier."
+
+"It would have been the next best thing.... Did you notice in the lists
+the number of Army Medical men killed and missing? Out of all proportion.
+That means that they're as much exposed as the combatants. More,
+really....
+
+"... Jeanne--do you realise that if we've any luck, any luck at all, we
+shall take the same risks?"
+
+"It's all very well for us. If it was only being killed--But
+there's killing."
+
+"Of course there's killing. If a man's willing to be killed he's jolly
+well earned his right to kill. It's the same for the other johnnie. If
+your life doesn't matter a hang, his doesn't either. He's got his
+feeling. He's got his romance. If he hasn't--"
+
+"Yes--if he hasn't?"
+
+"He's better dead."
+
+"Oh no; he might simply go slogging on without feeling anything, from a
+sense of duty. That would be beautiful; it would be _the_ most
+beautiful thing."
+
+"There you are, then. His duty's his romance. You can't get away from
+it."
+
+"No."
+
+But she thought: Supposing he went, loathing it, shivering, sick?
+Frightened. Well, of course it would be there too, simply because he
+_went_; only you would feel it, not he.
+
+Supposing he didn't go, supposing he stuck, and had to be pushed on, by
+bayonets, from behind? It didn't bear thinking of.
+
+John hadn't thought of it. He wouldn't. He couldn't see that some people
+were like that.
+
+"I don't envy," he said, "the chaps who come out to soft jobs in
+this war."
+
+They had found the little man in tweeds asleep behind the engine house,
+his chin sunk on his chest, his hands folded on his stomach. He had taken
+off his green velvet hat, and a crest of greyish hair rose up from his
+bald forehead, light and fine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was setting now. The foam of the wake had the pink tinge of red
+wine spilt on a white cloth; a highway of gold and rose, edged with
+purple, went straight from it to the sun.
+
+After the sunset, land, the sunk lines of the Flemish coast.
+
+There was a stir among the passengers; they plunged into the cabins and
+presently returned, carrying things. The groups sorted themselves, the
+Commission people standing apart with their air of arrogance and
+distinction. The little man in tweeds had waked up from his sleep behind
+the engine house, and strolled with a sort of dreamy swagger to his place
+at their head. Everybody moved over to the starboard side.
+
+They stood there in silence watching the white walls and domes and towers
+of Ostend. Charlotte and Conway had moved close to each other. She looked
+up into his face, searching his thoughts there. Suddenly from somewhere
+in the bows a song spurted and dropped and spurted again and shot up in
+the stillness, slender and clear, like a rod oft white water. The Belgian
+boys were singing the Marseillaise. On the deck their feet beat out the
+thud of the march.
+
+Charlotte looked away.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+"Nothing," Charlotte said, "is going to be worse than this."
+
+It seemed to her that they had waited hours in the huge grey hall of the
+Hotel-Hospital, she and Sutton and Gwinnie, while John talked to the
+President of the Red Cross in his bureau. Everybody looked at them: the
+door-keeper, the lift orderly; the ward men and nurses hurrying past;
+wide stares and sharp glances falling on her and Gwinnie, slanting
+downward to their breeches and puttees, then darting upwards to their
+English faces.
+
+Sutton moved, putting his broad body between them and the batteries of
+amused and interested eyes.
+
+They stood close together at the foot of the staircase. Above them the
+gigantic Flora leaned forward, holding out her flowers to preoccupied
+people who wouldn't look at her; she smiled foolishly; too stupid to know
+that the Flandria was no longer an hotel but a military hospital.
+
+John came out of the President's bureau. He looked disgusted and
+depressed.
+
+"They can put us up," he said; "but I've got to break it to you that
+we're not the only Field Ambulance in Ghent."
+
+Charlotte said, "Oh, well, we'd no business to suppose we were."
+
+"We've got to share our quarters with the other one.... It calls itself
+the McClane Corps."
+
+"Shall we have to sleep with it?" Sutton said.
+
+"We shall have to have it in our messroom. I believe it's up there now."
+
+"Well, that won't hurt us."
+
+"What'll hurt us is this. It'll be sent out before we are. McClane was
+here hours ago. He's been to Head Quarters."
+
+Sutton's gloom deepened. "How do you know?"
+
+"President says so."
+
+They went, following the matron, up the grey, tessellated stairs; at each
+landing the long, grey corridors were tunnels for the passage of strange
+smells, ether and iodine and carbolic and the faint odour of drains,
+seeking their outlet at the well of the staircase.
+
+On the third floor, at the turn of the corridor, a small vestibule
+between two glass doors led to a room flooded with a blond light from the
+south. Beyond the glass doors, their figures softened by the deep,
+doubled shimmer of the panes, they saw the little man in shabby tweeds,
+the two women, and the seven other men. This, Madame explained, was Dr.
+Donald McClane's Field Ambulance Corps. You could see it had thought it
+was the only one. As they entered they met the swoop of two beautiful,
+indignant eyes, a slow turning and abrupt stiffening of shoulders; the
+movement of the group was palpable, a tremor of hostility and resentment.
+
+It lasted with no abatement while Madame, standing there in her gaunt
+Flemish graciousness, murmured names. "Mrs. Rankin--" Mrs. Rankin nodded
+insolently and turned away. "Miss Bartrum--" Miss Bartrum, the rather
+charming one, bowed, drawing the shadow of grave eyebrows over sweet
+eyes. "Dr. Donald McClane--" As he bowed the Commandant's stare arched up
+at them, then dropped, suddenly innocent, suddenly indifferent.
+
+They looked around. Madame and her graciousness had gone. Nobody made a
+place for them at the two long tables set together in the middle of the
+room. The McClane Corps had spread itself over all the chairs and
+benches, in obstinate possession. They passed out through the open French
+windows on to the balcony.
+
+It looked south over the railway towards the country where they thought
+the fighting must be. They could see the lines where the troop trains
+ran, going northwest and southeast, and the railway station and post
+office all in one long red-brick building that had a flat roof with a
+crenellated parapet. Grass grew on the roof. And beyond the black railway
+lines miles upon miles of flat open country, green fields, rows of
+poplars standing up in them very straight; little woods; here and there a
+low rise bristling and dark with trees. The fighting must be over there.
+Under the balcony the white street ran southeastward, and scouting cars
+and ammunition wagons and long lines of troops were all going that way.
+
+While they talked they remained aware of the others. They could see
+McClane rubbing his hands; they heard his brief laugh that had no
+amusement in it, and his voice saying, "Anyhow, we've got in first."
+
+When they came back into the room they found the tables drawn apart with
+a wide space between. The Belgian orderlies were removing plates and cups
+from one to the other, establishing under the Commandant's directions a
+separate mess. By tea-time two chauffeurs had added themselves to the
+McClane Corps.
+
+Twelve to four. And they would have to live together nobody knew how
+long: as long as the war lasted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, in the bedroom that John shared with Sutton, they sat on
+two beds, discussing their prospects. Gwinnie was voluble.
+
+"They've driven us out of our messroom with their beastliness. We shall
+have to sit in our bedrooms all the time."
+
+"We'd better let the office know we're here," said Sutton, "in case we're
+sent for."
+
+"Anyhow," said Charlotte, "_I'm_ not going to bed."
+
+John smiled. A struggling, dejected smile.
+
+"My dear child, I've told you they're not going to send us out first."
+
+"I don't know--" said Gwinnie.
+
+"I _do_ know. We shall be lucky if we get a look in when McClane's cars
+break down."
+
+"That's it. Have you seen their cars? I overhauled them this morning, in
+the yard. They're nothing but old lorries, converted. And one of 'em's
+got solid tyres."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well--You wait."
+
+They waited. Even the McClane Corps had to wait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I don't care," said Charlotte, "how beastly they are to me, provided
+they leave John alone."
+
+"What can they do?" he said. "They don't matter."
+
+"There's such a lot of them," said Gwinnie. "It's when they're all
+together they're so poisonous."
+
+"It's when they're _separate_," Charlotte said. "I think Mrs. Rankin
+_does_ things. And there's McClane swearing he'll get us out of Belgium.
+But he won't!"
+
+She didn't care. She had got used to it as she had got used to the
+messroom and its furnishings, the basket chairs and backless benches, the
+two long tables covered with white marbled American leather, the
+photographs of the King and Queen of the Belgians above the chimney
+piece. The atmosphere of hostility was thick and penetrating, something
+that you breathed in with the smells of ether and iodine and
+disinfectant, that hung about the grey, leeking corridors and floated in
+the blond light of the room. She could feel a secret threat in it, as if
+at any minute it might work up to some pitch still more malignant, some
+supreme disaster. There were moments when she wondered whether McClane
+had prejudiced the authorities against them. At first she had regarded
+the little man as negligible; it was the women who had fascinated her, as
+if they had or might come to have for her some profound importance and
+significance. She didn't like McClane. He straddled too much. But you
+couldn't go on ignoring him. His dreamy, innocent full face with its
+arching eyes was a mask, the mask of dangerous, inimical intentions; his
+profile was rough cut, brutal, energetic, you guessed the upper lip thin
+and hard under the hanging moustache; the lower one stuck out like a
+sucker. That was his real face. It showed an adhesive, exhausting will
+that squeezed and sucked till it had got what it wanted out of people. He
+could work things. So could Mrs. Rankin. She had dined with the Colonel.
+
+Charlotte didn't care. She _liked_ that beastliness, that hostility of
+theirs. It was something you could put your back against; it braced her
+to defiance. It brought her closer to John, to John and Gwinnie, and
+shut them in together more securely. Sutton she was not quite so sure
+about. Through all their depression he seemed to stand apart somehow by
+himself in a profounder discontent. "There are only four of us," he
+said; "we can't call ourselves a corps." You could see the way his mind
+was working.
+
+Then suddenly the atmosphere lifted at one point. Mrs. Rankin changed her
+attitude to John. You could see her beautiful hawk's eyes pursuing him
+about the room. When she found him in the corridors or on the stairs she
+stopped him and chattered; under her breath because of the hushed wards.
+
+He told Charlotte about it.
+
+"That Mrs. Rankin seems inclined to be a bit too friendly."
+
+"I haven't noticed it."
+
+"Not with you. With Sutton and--and me."
+
+"Well--"
+
+"Well, I can't answer for Sutton, but I don't like it. That isn't what
+we're out here for."
+
+They were going into the messroom together towards dinner time. Mrs.
+Rankin and Alice Bartrum were there alone, seated at their tables, ready.
+Mrs. Rankin called out in her stressed, vibrating voice across the room:
+
+"Mr. _Conway_, you people ought to come in with us."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"_Because_ there are only four of you and we're twelve. Sixteen's the
+proper number for a unit. Alice, didn't I say, the minute I saw Mr.
+Conway with that car of his, didn't I _say_ we ought to have him?"
+
+"You did."
+
+"Thanks. I'd rather take my orders from the Colonel."
+
+"And _I'd_ rather take _mine_ from you than from McClane. Fancy coming
+out at the head of a Field Ambulance looking like that. Tell you what,
+Mr. Conway, if you'll join up with us I'll get the Colonel to make you
+our commandant."
+
+Alice Bartrum opened her shadowed eyes. "Trixie--you _can't_."
+
+"Can't I? I can make the old boy do anything I like."
+
+John stiffened. "You can't make me do anything you like, Mrs. Rankin.
+You'd much better stick to McClane."
+
+"What do any of us know about McClane?"
+
+"What do you know about me?"
+
+You could see how he hated her.
+
+"I know you mean business."
+
+"Doesn't he?"
+
+"Don't ask me what he _means_."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders violently. "Come over here and sit by me. I
+want to talk to you. Seriously."
+
+She had shifted her seat and made a place for him beside her on the
+bench. Her flushed, handsome face covered him with its smile. You could
+see she was used to being obeyed when she smiled like that; when she sent
+that light out of her eyes men did what she wanted. All her life the men
+she knew had obeyed her, all except McClane. She didn't know John.
+
+He raised his head and looked at her with cool, concentrated dislike.
+
+"I'd rather stay where I am if you don't mind. I want to talk to
+Miss Redhead."
+
+"Oh--" Mrs. Rankin's flush went out like a blown flame. Her lips made
+one pale, tight thread above the set square of her chin. All her light
+was in her eyes. They stared before her at the glass door where McClane
+was entering.
+
+He came swaggering and slipped into his place between her and Alice
+Bartrum with his air of not seeing Mrs. Rankin, of not seeing Charlotte
+and John, of not seeing anything he didn't want to see. Presently he
+bobbed round in his seat so as to see Sutton, and began talking to him
+excitedly.
+
+At the end of it Charlotte and Sutton found themselves alone, smiling
+into each other's faces.
+
+"Do you like him?" she said.
+
+"I'm not sure. All the same that isn't a bad idea of Mrs. Rankin's."
+
+It was Sutton who tried to work it the next morning, sounding McClane.
+
+Charlotte was in the space between the glass doors, arranging their
+stores in their own cupboard. McClane's stores had overflowed into it on
+the lower shelves. She could hear the two men talking in the room,
+Sutton's low, persuasive voice; she couldn't hear what he was saying.
+
+Suddenly McClane brought his fist down on the table.
+
+"I'll take you. And I'll take your women. And I'll take your ambulances.
+I could do with two more ambulances. But I won't take Conway."
+
+"You can't tell him that."
+
+"Can't I!"
+
+"What can you say?"
+
+"I can say--"
+
+She pushed open the glass door and went in. McClane was whispering
+furtively. She saw Sutton stop him with a look. They turned to her and
+Sutton spoke.
+
+"Come in, Miss Redhead. This concerns you. Dr. McClane wants you and Miss
+Denning and me to join his corps."
+
+"And how about Mr. Conway?"
+
+"Well--" McClane was trying to look innocent. "Mr. Conway's just the
+difficulty. There can't be two commandants in one corps and he says he
+won't take orders from me."
+
+(Mrs. Rankin must have talked about it, then.)
+
+"Is that what you told Dr. Sutton?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His cold, innocent blue eyes supported him. He was lying; she knew he was
+lying; that was not what he had said when he had whispered.
+
+"You don't suppose," she said, "I should leave Mr. Conway? And if I stick
+to him Gwinnie'll stick."
+
+"And Dr. Sutton?"
+
+"He can please himself."
+
+"If Miss Redhead stays I shall stay."
+
+"John will let you off like a shot, if you don't want to."
+
+She turned to go and McClane called after her, "My offer remains open to
+you three."
+
+Through the glass door she heard Sutton saying, "If you're right,
+McClane, I can't very well leave her with him, can I?"
+
+Sutton was stupid. He didn't understand. Lying on her bed that night
+Charlotte made it out.
+
+"Gwinnie--you know why McClane won't have John?"
+
+"I suppose because Mrs. Rankin's keen on him."
+
+"McClane isn't keen on Mrs. Rankin.... Can't you see he's trying to hoof
+John out of Belgium, because he wants all the glory to himself? We
+wouldn't do that to one of them, even if we were mean enough not to want
+them in it."
+
+"He wanted Sutton."
+
+"Oh, Sutton--He wasn't afraid of _him_.... When you think of the war--and
+think of people being like that. Jealous. Hating each other--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You mightn't like Mrs. Rankin, Mrs. Rankin and McClane; but you couldn't
+say they weren't splendid.
+
+Five days had passed. On the third day the McClane Corps had been sent
+out. (Mrs. Rankin had not dined with the Colonel for nothing.)
+
+It went again and again. By the fifth day they knew that it had
+distinguished itself at Alost and Termonde and Quatrecht. The names
+sounded in their brains like a song with an exciting, maddening refrain.
+October stretched before them, golden and blank, a volume of tense,
+vibrating time.
+
+Nothing for it but to wait and wait. The summons might come any minute.
+Charlotte and Gwinnie had begun by sitting on their drivers' seats in the
+ambulances standing in the yard, ready to start the very instant it came.
+Their orders were to hold themselves in readiness. They held themselves
+in readiness and saw McClane's cars swing out from the rubbered sweep in
+front of the Hospital three and four times a day. They stood on their
+balcony and watched them rush along the road that led to the battlefields
+southeast of the city. The sight of the flat Flemish land and the sadness
+of lovely days oppressed them. She felt that it must be partly that. The
+incredible loveliness of the days. They sat brooding over the map of
+Belgium, marking down the names of the places, Alost, Termonde and
+Quatrecht, that McClane had gone to, that he would talk about on his
+return, when an awful interest would impel them to listen. He and Mrs.
+Rankin would come in about tea-time, swaggering and excited, telling
+everybody that they had been in the line of fire; and Alice Bartrum would
+move about the room, quiet and sweet, cutting bread and butter and
+pretending to be unconcerned in the narration. And in the evening, after
+dinner, the discussion went on and on in John's bedroom. He raged against
+his infernal luck. If they thought he was going to take it lying down--
+
+"McClane can keep me out of my messroom, but he can't keep me out of my
+job. There's room in 'the line of fire' for both of us."
+
+"How are you going to get into it?" said Sutton.
+
+"Same way as McClane. If he can go to Head Quarters, so can I."
+
+"I wouldn't," Sutton said. "It might give a bad impression. Our turn'll
+come before long."
+
+Gwinnie laughed. "It won't--unless Charlotte dines with the Colonel."
+
+"It certainly _mayn't_," said Charlotte. "They may commandeer our cars
+and give them to McClane."
+
+"They can't," said Gwinnie. "We're volunteers."
+
+"They can do anything they choose. Military necessity."
+
+Gwinnie was thoughtful.
+
+"John," she said, "can I have one of the cars to-morrow afternoon?"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Never mind. Can I?"
+
+"You can have both the damned things if you like; they're no good to me."
+
+The next afternoon they looked on while Gwinnie, who wore a look of great
+wisdom and mystery, slipped her car out of the yard into a side street
+and headed for the town. She came back at tea-time, bright-eyed and
+faintly flushed.
+
+"You'll find we shall be sent out to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, shall we!" John said.
+
+"Yes. I've worked it for you."
+
+"You?"
+
+"Me. They've seen my car."
+
+"Who have?"
+
+"The whole lot of them. General Staff. First of all I paraded it all
+round the blessed town. Then I turned into the Place d'Armes. I kept it
+standing two solid hours outside the Hotel de la Poste where the blooming
+brass hats all hang out. In five minutes it collected a small crowd.
+First it was only refugees and war correspondents. Then the Colonel came
+out and stuck his head in at the back. He got quite excited when he saw
+we could take five stretcher cases.
+
+"I showed him our tyres and the electric light, and I ran the stretchers
+in and out for him. He'd never seen them with wheels before.... He said
+it was 'magnifique'... The old bird wanted to take me into the hotel and
+stand me tea."
+
+"Didn't you let him?"
+
+"No. I said I had to stay with my car. And I took jolly good care to let
+him know it hadn't been out yet."
+
+"Whatever made you think of it?"
+
+"I don't know. It just sort of came to me."
+
+Next afternoon John had orders to go to Berlaere to fetch wounded.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+At the turn of the road they heard the guns: a solemn Boom--Boom coming
+up out of hushed spaces; they saw white puffs of smoke rising in the blue
+sky. The French guns somewhere back of them. The German guns in front
+southwards beyond the river.
+
+Charlotte looked at John; he was brilliantly happy. They smiled at each
+other as if they said "_Now_ it's beginning."
+
+Outside the village of Berlaere they were held up by two sentries with
+rifles. (Thrilling, that.) Their Belgian guide leaned out and whispered
+the password; John showed their passports and they slipped through.
+
+Where the road turned on their left into the street they saw a group of
+soldiers standing at the door of a house. Three of them, a Belgian
+lieutenant and two non-commissioned officers, advanced hurriedly and
+stopped the car. The lieutenant forbade them to go on.
+
+"But," John said, "we've got orders to go on."
+
+A shrug intimated that their orders were not the lieutenant's affair.
+They couldn't go on.
+
+"But we _must_ go on. We've got to fetch some wounded."
+
+"There aren't any wounded," said the lieutenant.
+
+Charlotte had an inspiration. "You tell us that tale every time," she
+said, "and there are always wounded."
+
+The Belgian guide and the lieutenant exchanged glances.
+
+"I've told you there aren't any," the lieutenant said. "You must go
+back."
+
+"Here--You explain."
+
+But instead of explaining the little Belgian backed up the lieutenant by
+a refusal on his own part to go on.
+
+"He can please himself. _We're_ going on."
+
+"You don't imagine," Charlotte said, "by any chance that we're _afraid_?"
+
+The lieutenant smiled, a smile that lifted his ferocious, upturned
+moustache: first sign that he was yielding. He looked at the sergeant and
+the corporal, and they nodded.
+
+John had his foot on the clutch. "We're due," he said, "at the dressing
+station by three o'clock."
+
+She thought: He's magnificent. She could see that the lieutenant and the
+soldiers thought he was magnificent. Supposing she had gone out with some
+meek fool who would have gone back when they told him!
+
+The lieutenant skipped aside before the advancing car. "You can go," he
+said, "to the dressing-station."
+
+"They always do that as a matter of form--sort of warning us that it's
+our own risk. They won't be responsible."
+
+She didn't answer. She was thinking that when they turned John's driving
+place would be towards the German guns.
+
+"I wish you'd let me drive. You know I like driving."
+
+"Not this time."
+
+At the dressing-station, a deserted store, they found a Belgian Army
+Medical officer engaged with a tired and flushed and dirty soldier. He
+was bandaging his left hand which had made a trail of blood splashes from
+the street to the counter. The right hand hung straight down from a nick
+in the dropped wrist where a tendon had been severed. He told them that
+they had grasped the situation. Seven men waited there for transport.
+
+The best thing--perhaps--He looked doubtfully at Charlotte--would be for
+them to take these men back at once. (The tired soldier murmured
+something: a protest or an entreaty.) Though they were not exactly urgent
+cases. They could wait.
+
+Charlotte suspected a serious reservation. "You mean you have others
+more urgent?"
+
+The soldier got in his word. "Much more." His lips and eyes moved
+excitedly in the flush and grime.
+
+"Well yes," the doctor admitted that they had. Not in the village, but in
+a hamlet about a mile outside of it. An outpost. This man and three
+others had been holding it with two machine guns. He had had a finger
+shot away and his wrist cut open by a shell-burst; the other three were
+left there, badly wounded.
+
+"All right, we'll go and fetch them."
+
+"Monsieur, the place is being shelled. You have no orders."
+
+"We've no orders not to."
+
+The doctor spread out helpless palms, palms that disclaimed
+responsibility.
+
+"If you go, you go at your own risk. I will not send you."
+
+"That's all right."
+
+"Oh well--But certainly Mademoiselle must be left behind."
+
+"Mademoiselle is much too useful."
+
+Frantic gestures of eyebrows and palms.
+
+"You must not stay there more than three minutes. _Three minutes_."
+
+He turned to the cut tendon with an air of integrity, his conscience
+appeased by laying down this time limit.
+
+John released the clutch, and the soldier shouted out something, they
+couldn't make out what, that ended with "mitrailleuses."
+
+As they ran down the street the solemn Boom--Boom came right and left;
+they were now straight between the two batteries.
+
+"Are you all right, Sharlie?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+The little Belgian by her side muttered, protesting.
+
+"We're not really in any danger. It's all going on over our heads."
+
+"Do you suppose," she said, "they'll get our range?"
+
+"Rather not. Why should they? They've got their range and they'll
+stick to it."
+
+The firing on their right ceased.
+
+"They're quiet enough now," she said.
+
+The little Belgian informed her that if they were quiet so much the
+worse. They were finding their range.
+
+She thought: We were safe enough before, but--
+
+"Supposing," she said, "they alter their range?"
+
+"They won't alter it just for the fun of killing us. They haven't
+spotted the batteries yet. It's the batteries they're trying for, not
+the street."
+
+But the little Belgian went on protesting.
+
+"What's the matter with him?"
+
+"He's getting a bit jumpy," she said, "that's all."
+
+"Tell him to buck up. Tell him it's all right."
+
+She translated. The little Belgian shook his head, mournfully persistent.
+"Monsieur," he said, "didn't know."
+
+"Oh yes, he does know."
+
+It was absurd of the little man to suppose you didn't know, when
+the noise of the French guns told them how near they were to the
+enemy's target.
+
+She tried not to listen to him. His mutterings broke up the queer
+stillness that held her after she had heard the guns. It was only by
+keeping still that you felt, wave by wave, the rising thrill of the
+adventure. Only by keeping still she was aware of what was passing in
+John's mind. He knew. He knew. They were one in the almost palpable
+excitement that they shared; locked close, closer than their bodies could
+have joined them, in the strange and poignant ecstasy of danger.
+
+There was the sound of an explosion somewhere in front of them beyond
+the houses.
+
+"Did you hear that, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Miles away," said John.
+
+She knew it wasn't. She thought: He doesn't want me to know. He thinks
+I'll be frightened. I mustn't tell him.
+
+But the Belgian had none of John's scruples. The shell was near, he said;
+very near. It had fallen in the place they were going to.
+
+"But that's the place where the wounded men are."
+
+He admitted that it was the place where the wounded men were.
+
+They were out of the village now. Their road ran through flat open
+country, a causeway raised a little above the level of the fields. No
+cover anywhere from the fire if it came. The Belgian had begun again.
+
+"What's that he's saying now?"
+
+"He says we shall give away the position of the road."
+
+"It's the one they told us to take. We've got to go on it. He's in a
+beastly funk. That's what's the matter with him."
+
+The Belgian shrugged his shoulders as much as to say he had done his duty
+and things might now take their course, and they were mistaken if for one
+minute they supposed he was afraid. But they had not gone fifty yards
+before he begged to be put down. He said it was absolutely necessary that
+he should go back to the village and collect the wounded there and have
+them ready for the ambulance on its return.
+
+They let him go. Charlotte looked round the corner of the hood and saw
+him running with brief, jerky strides.
+
+"He's got a nerve," said John, "to be able to do it."
+
+"What excuse do you think he'll make?"
+
+"Oh, he'll say we sent him."
+
+The straight dyke of the road went on and on. Seen from the sunk German
+lines the heavy ambulance car would look like a house on wheels running
+along a wall. She thought again of John on his exposed seat. If only he
+had let her drive--But that was absurd. Of course he wouldn't let her. If
+you were to keep on thinking of the things that might happen to
+John--Meanwhile nothing could take from them the delight of this
+dangerous run across the open. She had to remind herself that the
+adventure, the romance of it was not what mattered most; it was not the
+real thing, the thing they had gone out for.
+
+When they came to the wounded, when they came to the wounded, then it
+would begin.
+
+The hamlet began to show now; it sat on one side of the road, low and
+alone in the flat land, an open field in front of it, and at the bottom
+of the field the river and a line of willows, and behind the willows the
+Germans, hidden. White smoke curled among the branches. You could see it
+was an outpost, one of the points at which the Germans, if they broke
+through, would come into the village. They supposed that the house where
+the wounded men were would be the last of the short row.
+
+Here on their right there were no houses, only the long, high flank of a
+barn. The parts that had been built out into the field were shelled away,
+but the outer wall by the roadside still held. It was all that stood
+between them and the German guns. They drew up the car under its shelter
+and got down.
+
+They could see all the houses of the hamlet at once on their left;
+whitewashed walls; slender grey doors and shutters. The three that
+looked out on to the barn were untouched. A few yards ahead a small,
+empty wine-shop faced the open field; its doorstep and the path in front
+of its windows glittered with glass dust, with spikes and splinters, and
+heaped shale of glass that slid and cracked under your feet. Beyond it,
+a house with its door and all its windows and the front slope of its
+roof blown in. A broken shutter sagged from the wall. Then the shell of
+the last house; it pricked up one plastered gable, white and hard
+against the blue.
+
+They found the men in the last house but one, the house with the broken
+shutter. They went, carrying their stretchers and the haversack of
+dressings, under the slanted lintel into the room. The air in there was
+hot and stifling and thickened with a grey powdery swarm. Their feet sank
+through a layer of pinkish, greyish dust.
+
+The three wounded men lay stretched out on this floor, among brickbats
+and broken panes and slabs of dropped plaster. A thin grey powder had
+settled on them all. And by the side of each man the dust was stiffened
+into a red cake with a glairy pool in the middle of it, fed from the raw
+wound; and where two men lay together their pools had joined and
+overflowed in a thin red stream.
+
+John put down his stretcher and stood still. His face was very white, and
+his upper lip showed in-drawn and dry, and tightened as though it were
+glued to his teeth.
+
+"John, you _aren't_ going to faint or be sick or anything?"
+
+"I'm all right."
+
+He went forward, clenching his fists; moving in a curious drawn way, like
+a sleep walker.
+
+They were kneeling in the dust now, looking for the wounds.
+
+"We must do this chap with the arm first. He'll want a tourniquet."
+
+He spoke in a husky whisper as if he were half asleep....
+
+The wounded head stuck to the floor. They scraped round it, digging with
+their hands; it came up wearing a crust of powdered lime. A pad and a
+bandage. They couldn't do anything more for that ... The third man, with
+the fractured shin-bone and the big flesh-wound in his thigh, must have
+splints and a dressing.
+
+She wondered how John would set about his work. But his queer, hypnotised
+actions were effectual and clean.
+
+Between them they had fixed the tourniquet.
+
+Through all her preoccupation and the quick, dexterous movement of her
+hands she could feel her pity tightening her throat: pity that hurt like
+love, that was delicious and exquisite like love. Nothing mattered,
+nothing existed in her mind but the three wounded men. John didn't
+matter. John didn't exist. He was nothing but a pair of hands working
+quickly and dexterously with her own.... She looked up. John's mouth kept
+its hard, glued look; his eyes were feverish behind a glaze of water, and
+red-rimmed.
+
+She thought: It's awful for him. He minds too much. It hurt her to see
+how he minded. After all, he did matter. Deep inside her he mattered more
+than the wounded men; he mattered more than anything on earth. Only there
+wasn't time, there wasn't _time_ to think of him.
+
+She turned to the next man and caught sight of the two machine guns with
+their tilted muzzles standing in the corner of the room by the chimney.
+They must remember to bring away the guns.
+
+John's hypnotic whisper came again. "You might get those splints,
+Charlotte."
+
+As she crossed the road a shell fell in the open field beyond, and burst,
+throwing up a great splash and spray of brown earth. She stiffened
+herself in an abrupt gesture of defiance. Her mind retorted: "You've
+missed, that time. You needn't think I'm going to put myself out for
+_you_." To show that she wasn't putting herself out (in case they should
+be looking) she strolled with dignity to her car, selected carefully the
+kind of splint she needed, and returned. She thought: Oh well--supposing
+they _do_ hit. We must get those men out before another comes.
+
+John looked up as she came to him. His face glistened with pinheads of
+sweat; he panted in the choking air.
+
+"Where did that shell burst?"
+
+"Miles away."
+
+"Are you certain?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+She lied. Why not? John had been lying all the time. Lying was part of
+their defiance, a denial that the enemy's effort had succeeded. Nothing
+mattered but the fixing of the splints and the carrying of the men....
+
+John was cranking up the engine when she turned back into the house.
+
+"I _say_, what are you doing?"
+
+"Going for the guns."
+
+There was, she noticed, a certain longish interval between shells. John
+and the wounded men would be safe from shrapnel under the shelter of the
+wall. She brought out the first gun and stowed it at the back of the car.
+Then she went in for the other. It stood on the seat between them with
+its muzzle pointing down the road. Charlotte put her arm round it to
+steady it.
+
+On the way back to the dressing-station she sat silent, thinking of
+the three wounded men in there, behind, rocked and shaken by the
+jolting of the car on the uneven causeway. John was silent, too,
+absorbed by his steering.
+
+But as they ran into Ghent the romance of it, the romance of it, came
+back to her. It wasn't over yet. They would have to go out again for the
+wounded they had had to leave behind at Berlaere.
+
+"John--John--It's like nothing else on earth."
+
+"I told you it would be."
+
+Slowly realization came to her. They had brought in their wounded under
+the enemy's fire. And they had saved the guns.
+
+      *       * * * *
+
+"Do you mind," John said, "if Sutton goes instead of me He hasn't
+been out yet?"
+
+"N-no. Not if I can go too."
+
+"Do you want to?"
+
+"Awfully."
+
+She had drawn up the ambulance in the Square before the Hospital and sat
+in her driver's seat, waiting. Sutton came to her there. When he saw her
+he stood still.
+
+"_You_ going?"
+
+"Rather. Do you mind?"
+
+Sutton didn't answer. All the way out to Berlaere he sat stolid and
+silent, not looking at anything they passed and taking no more notice of
+the firing than if he hadn't heard it. As the car swung into Berlaere she
+was aware of his voice, low under the noise of the engine.
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Conway told me it was you who saved the guns."
+
+Suddenly she was humbled.
+
+"It was the men who saved them. We just brought them away."
+
+"Conway told me what you did," he said quietly.
+
+Going out with Sutton was a quiet affair.
+
+"You know," he said presently, "it was against the Hague Convention."
+
+"Good heavens, so it was! I never thought of it."
+
+"You must think of it. You gave the Germans the right to fire on all our
+ambulances.... You see, this isn't just a romantic adventure; it's a
+disagreeable, necessary, rather dangerous job."
+
+"I didn't do it for swank. I knew the guns were wanted, and I couldn't
+bear to leave them."
+
+"I know, it would have been splendid if you'd been a combatant. But," he
+said sadly, "this is a field ambulance, not an armoured car."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+She was glad they had been sent out with the McClane Corps to Melle. She
+wanted McClane to see the stuff that John was made of. She knew what had
+been going on in the commandant's mind. He had been trying to persuade
+himself that John was no good, because, from the minute he had seen him
+with his ambulance on the wharf at Ostend, from the minute he had known
+his destination, he had been jealous of him and afraid. Why, he must have
+raced them all the way from Ostend, to get in first. Afraid and jealous,
+afraid of John's youth with its secret of triumph and of courage; jealous
+of John's face and body that men and women turned back to look at as they
+passed; even the soldiers going up to the battlefields, going up to
+wounds and death, turned to look at this creature of superb and brilliant
+life. Even on the boat he must have had a dreadful wonder whether John
+was bound for Ghent; he must have known from the beginning that wherever
+Conway placed himself he would stand out and make other men look small
+and insignificant. If he wasn't jealous and afraid of Sutton she supposed
+it was because John had had that rather diminishing effect on poor Billy.
+
+If Billy Sutton distinguished himself that would open McClane's eyes a
+little wider, too.
+
+She wondered why Billy kept on saying that McClane was a great
+psychologist. If it was true that would be very awful for McClane; he
+would see everything going on inside people, then, all the things he
+didn't want to see; he wouldn't miss anything, and he would know all the
+time what John was like. The little man was wilfully shutting his eyes
+because he was so mean that he couldn't bear to see John as he really
+was. Now he would have to see.
+
+The thought of McClane's illumination consoled her for her own inferior
+place in the adventure. This time the chauffeurs would have to stay at
+the end of the village with their cars. The three were drawn up at the
+street side, close under the house walls, McClane's first. Then Sutton's,
+with Gwinnie. Then hers; behind it the short straight road where the
+firing would come down.
+
+John stood in the roadway waiting for the others. He had his hand beside
+her hand, grasping the arm of the driver's seat.
+
+"I wish you could take me with you," she said.
+
+"Can't. The orders are, all chauffeurs to stand by the cars."
+
+... His eyebrows knotted and twitched in sudden anxiety.
+
+"You know, Sharlie, you'll be fired on."
+
+"I know. I don't mind, John, I don't really. I shall be all right."
+
+"Yes. You'll be all right." But by the way he kept on glancing up and
+down the road she could see he was uneasy. "If you could have stood in
+front of those cars. _You're_ in the most dangerous place here."
+
+"Somebody's got to be in it."
+
+He looked at her and smiled. "Jeanne," he said, "in her armour."
+
+"Rot."
+
+And they were silent.
+
+"I say, John--my car _does_ cover Gwinnie's a bit, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes," he said abruptly.
+
+"_That's_ all right. You must go now. They're coming for the stretchers."
+
+His face quivered. He thrust out his hand quickly, and as she took it she
+thought: He thinks he isn't coming back. She was aware of Mrs. Rankin and
+two of the McClane men with stretchers, passing; she could see Mrs.
+Rankin looking at them as she came on, smiling over her shoulder, drawing
+the men's attention to their leave-taking.
+
+She thought: _They_ don't shake hands when they're going out. They don't
+think whether they're coming back or not.... They don't think at all. But
+then, none of them were lovers as she and John were lovers.
+
+"John, you'd better go and carry Mrs. Rankin's stretcher for her."
+
+He went.
+
+She watched them as they walked together up the short straight road to
+the battlefield at the top. Sutton followed with Alice Bartrum; then the
+McClane men; they nodded to her and smiled. Then McClane, late, running,
+trying to overtake John and Mrs. Rankin, to get to the head of his unit.
+Perhaps he was afraid that John, in his khaki, would be mistaken for the
+commandant.
+
+How childish he was with his fear and jealousy. Childish. She thought of
+his petulant refusal to let John come in with them. As if he could really
+keep him out. When it came to action they _were_ one corps; they couldn't
+very well be divided, since McClane had more men than stretchers and John
+had more stretchers than men. They would all be infinitely happier,
+working together like that, instead of standing stupidly apart, glaring
+and hating.
+
+Yet she knew what McClane and Mrs. Rankin had been playing for. McClane,
+if he could, would have taken their fine Roden cars from them; he would
+have taken Sutton. She knew that Mrs. Rankin would have taken John from
+her, Charlotte Redhead, if she could.
+
+And when she thought of the beautiful, arrogant woman, marching up to the
+battlefield with John, she wondered whether, after all, she didn't hate
+her.... No. No. It was horrible to hate a woman who at any minute might
+be killed. They said McClane didn't look after his women. He didn't
+care how they exposed themselves to the firing; he took them into
+unnecessary danger. He didn't care. He was utterly cold, utterly
+indifferent to everybody and everything except his work of getting in the
+wounded.... Well, perhaps, if he had been decent to John, she wouldn't
+have believed a word of it, and anyhow they hadn't come out there to be
+protected.
+
+She had a vision of John and McClane carrying Mrs. Rankin between them on
+a stretcher. That was what would happen if you hated. Hate could kill.
+
+Then John and she were safe. They were lovers. Lovers. Neither of them
+had ever said a word, but they owned the wonderful, immaterial fact in
+secret to each other; the thought of it moved in secret behind all their
+other thoughts. From the moment, just passed, when they held each other's
+hands she knew that John loved her, not in a dream, not in coldness, but
+with a queer unearthly ardour. He had her in his incredible, immaterial
+way, a way that none of them would understand.
+
+From the Barrow Hill Farm time? Or from yesterday? She didn't know.
+Perhaps it had gone on all the time; but it would be only since yesterday
+that he really knew it.
+
+A line of soldiers marched by, going up to the battlefield. They looked
+at her and smiled, a flashing of bright eyes and teeth all down the line.
+When they had passed the street was deserted.
+
+... That rattle on the stones was the firing. It had come at last. She
+saw Gwinnie looking back round the corner of the hood to see what it was
+like. She called to her, "Don't stick your head out, you silly cuckoo.
+You'll be hit." She said to herself, If I think about it I shall feel
+quite jumpy. It was one thing to go tearing along between two booming
+batteries, in excitement, with an end in view, and quite another thing to
+sit tight and still on a motionless car, to be fired on. A bit trying to
+the nerves, she thought, if it went on long. She was glad that her car
+stood next to the line of fire, sheltering Gwinnie's, and she wondered
+how John was getting on up there.
+
+The hands of the ambulance clock pointed to half-past three. They had
+been waiting forty minutes, then. She got down to see if any of the
+stretcher bearers were in sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were coming back. Straggling, lurching forms. White bandages. The
+wounded who could walk came first. Then the stretchers.
+
+Alice Bartrum stopped as she passed Charlotte. The red had gone from her
+sunburn, but her face was undisturbed.
+
+"You've got to wait here," she said, "for Mr. Conway and Sutty. And
+Trixie and Mac. They mayn't be back for ages. They've gone miles up
+the field."
+
+She waited.
+
+The front cars had been loaded, had driven off and returned three times.
+It was six o'clock before John appeared with Mrs. Rankin.
+
+She heard Mrs. Rankin calling sharply to her to get down and give a hand
+with the stretcher.
+
+John and Mrs. Rankin were disputing.
+
+_"Can't_ you shove it in at the bottom?" he was saying.
+
+_"No._ The first cases _must_ go on top."
+
+Her mouth snapped like a clamp. Her eyes were blazing. She was struggling
+with the head of the stretcher while John heaved at the foot. He
+staggered as he moved, and his face was sallow-white and drawn and
+glistening. When Charlotte took the shafts from him they were slippery
+with his sweat.
+
+"Is he hurt?" she whispered.
+
+"Very badly hurt," said Mrs. Rankin.
+
+"John, I mean."
+
+Mrs. Rankin snorted. "You'd better ask him."
+
+John was slouching round to the front of the car, anxious to get out of
+the sight and sound of her. He went with an uneven dropping movement of
+one hip. Charlotte followed him.
+
+"Get into your seat, Sharlie. We've got to wait for Billy and McClane."
+
+He dragged himself awkwardly into the place beside her.
+
+"John," she said, "are you hurt?"
+
+"No. But I think I've strained something. That's why I couldn't lift that
+damned stretcher."
+
+       *        * * * *
+
+The windows stood wide open to the sweet, sharp air. She heard Mrs.
+Rankin and Sutton talking on the balcony. In that dreadful messroom you
+heard everything.
+
+"What do you suppose it was then?" Mrs. Rankin said.
+
+And Sutton, "Oh, I don't know. Something upset him."
+
+"If he's going to be upset _like that_ every time he'd better go home."
+
+They were talking--she knew they were talking about John.
+
+"Hallo, Charlotte, we haven't left you much tea."
+
+"It doesn't matter."
+
+Her hunger left her suddenly. She stared with disgust at the remains of
+the tea the McClane Corps had eaten.
+
+Sutton went on. "He hasn't been sleeping properly. I've made him
+go to bed."
+
+"If you can keep him in bed for the duration of the war--"
+
+"Are you talking about John?"
+
+"We are."
+
+"I don't know what you're driving at; but I suppose he was sick on
+that beastly battlefield. It's all very well for you two; you're a
+trained nurse and Billy's a surgeon.... You aren't taken that way when
+you see blood."
+
+"Blood?" said Mrs. Rankin.
+
+"Yes. Blood. He was perfectly all right yesterday."
+
+Mrs. Rankin laughed. "Yesterday he couldn't see there was any danger. You
+could tell that by the idiotic things he said."
+
+"I saw it. And if I could he could."
+
+"Funny kid. You'd better get on with your tea. You'll be sent out again
+before you know where you are."
+
+Charlotte settled down. Sutton was standing beside her now, cutting bread
+and butter.
+
+"Hold on," he said. "That tea's all stewed and cold. I'll make you
+some of mine."
+
+She drank the hot, fragrant China tea he brought her.
+
+Presently she stood up. "I think I'll take John some of this."
+
+"Best thing you can give him," Sutton said. He got up and opened the
+doors for her, the glass doors and the door of the bedroom.
+
+She sat down beside John's bed and watched him while he drank
+Sutton's tea. He said he was all right now. No. He hadn't ruptured
+anything; he only thought he had; but Sutton had overhauled him and
+said he was all right.
+
+And all the time his face was still vexed and drawn. Something must have
+happened out there; something that hurt him to think of.
+
+"John," she said, "I wish I'd gone with you instead of Mrs. Rankin."
+
+"I wish to God you had. Everything's all right when you're with me, and
+everything's all wrong when you're not."
+
+"How do you mean, wrong?"
+
+He shook his head, frowning slightly, as a sign for her to stop. Sutton
+had come into the room.
+
+"You needn't go," he said, "I've only come for my coat and my case. I've
+got to help with the operations."
+
+He slipped into the white linen coat. There were thin smears of blood on
+the sleeves and breast. He groped about the room, peering short-sightedly
+for his case of instruments.
+
+"John, was Mrs. Rankin any good?" she asked presently.
+
+John lay back and closed his eyes as if to shut out the sight of
+Mrs. Rankin.
+
+"Don't talk to me," he said, "about that horrible woman."
+
+Sutton had turned abruptly from his search.
+
+"Good?" he said. "She was magnificent. So was Miss Bartrum. So was
+McClane."
+
+John opened his eyes. "So was Charlotte."
+
+"I quite agree with you." Sutton had found his case. His face was hidden
+by the raised lid as he peered, examining his instruments. He spoke
+abstractly. "Magnificent."
+
+When he left the room Charlotte followed him.
+
+"Billy--"
+
+"Well--"
+
+He stopped in his noiseless course down the corridor.
+
+"What was it?" she said. "What happened?"
+
+He didn't pretend not to understand her.
+
+"Oh, nothing. Conway and Mrs. Rankin didn't hit it off very well
+together."
+
+They spoke in low, rapid tones, conscious, always, of the wards behind
+the shut doors. Her feet went fast and noiseless beside his as he hurried
+to the operating theatre. They came out on to the wide landing and waited
+there by the brass lattice of the lift.
+
+"How do you mean, hit it off?"
+
+"Oh well, she thought he didn't come up quick enough with a stretcher,
+and she pitched into him."
+
+"But he was dead beat. Done. Couldn't she see that?"
+
+"No. I don't suppose she could. She was a bit excited."
+
+"She was horrible." Now that Mrs. Rankin was back safe she hated her. She
+knew she hated her.
+
+"A bit cruel, perhaps. All the same," he said, "she was magnif--"
+
+The lift had come hissing and wailing up behind him. The orderly stood in
+it, staring at Sutton's back, obsequious, yet impatient. She thought of
+the wounded men in the theatre downstairs.
+
+"You mustn't keep them waiting," she said.
+
+He stepped back into the lift. It lowered him rapidly. His chin was on a
+level with the floor when his mouth tried again and succeeded:
+"Magnificent."
+
+And she knew that she had followed him out to near him say that John had
+been magnificent, too.
+
+Gwinnie was looking in at the messroom door and saying "Do you know where
+Charlotte is?" Mrs. Rankin's voice called out, "I think you'll find her
+in _Mr. Conway's_ bedroom." One of the chauffeurs laughed. Charlotte knew
+what they were thinking.
+
+Gwinnie failed to retort. She was excited, shaken out of her stolidity.
+
+"Oh, there you are! I've got something ripping to tell you. Not in here."
+
+They slouched, with their arms slung affectionately round each other's
+waists, into their own room. Behind the shut door Gwinnie began.
+
+"The Colonel's most frightfully pleased about Berlaere."
+
+"Does he think they'll hold it?"
+
+"It isn't that. He's pleased about you."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"You and John. What you did there. And your bringing back the guns."
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"Mac. The old boy was going on to him like anything about you last
+night. It means you'll be sent out every time. Every time there's
+anything big on."
+
+"Oh-h! Let's go and tell John.... I suppose," she added, "that's what was
+the matter with Mrs. Rankin."
+
+She wondered whether it had been the matter with Billy Sutton too; if he
+too were jealous and afraid.
+
+That night Mrs. Rankin told her what the Colonel really had said: "'C'est
+magnifique, mais ce n'est pas--la Croix Rouge.' If you're all sent home
+to-morrow it'll serve you jolly well right," she said.
+
+But somehow she couldn't make it sound as if he had been angry.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+She waited.
+
+John had told her to stay there with the wounded man up the turn of the
+stable yard while he went for the stretcher. His car, packed with
+wounded, stood a little way up the street, headed for Ghent. Sutton's
+car, with one of McClane's chauffeurs, was in front of it, ready; she
+could hear the engine purring.
+
+Instead of going at once for the stretcher John had followed Sutton into
+the house opposite, the house with the narrow grey shutters. And he had
+called to her again across the road to wait for him.
+
+Behind her in the yard the wounded man sat on the cobblestones, his back
+propped against the stable wall. He was safe there, safer than he would
+have been outside in the ambulance.
+
+It was awful to think that he would have been left behind if they had not
+found him at the last minute among the straw.
+
+She went and stood by the yard entrance to see whether John were coming
+with the stretcher. A soldier came out of the house with the narrow
+shutters, wounded, limping, his foot bound to a splint. Then Sutton came,
+hurrying to help him. He shouted to her, "Come on, Charlotte, hurry up!"
+and she called back, "I've got to wait here for John."
+
+She watched them go on slowly up the road to Sutton's car; she saw them
+get in; she saw the car draw out and rush away.
+
+Then she saw John come out of the door of the house and stand there,
+looking up and down the street. Once she saw him glance back over his
+shoulder at something behind him in the room. The same instant she heard
+the explosion and saw the shell burst in the middle of the street, not
+fifty yards from the ambulance. Half a minute after she saw John dash
+from the doorway and run, run at an incredible pace, towards his car. She
+heard him crank up the engine.
+
+She supposed that he was going to back towards the yard, and she wondered
+whether she could lift up the Belgian and carry him out. She stooped over
+him, put her hands under his armpits, raising him and wondering. Better
+not. He had a bad wound. Better wait for the stretcher.
+
+She turned, suddenly, arrested. The noise she heard was not the grating
+noise of a car backing, it was the scream of a car getting away; it
+dropped to a heavy whirr and diminished.
+
+She looked out. Up the road she saw John's car rushing furiously
+towards Ghent.
+
+The Belgian had heard it. His eyes moved. Black hare's eyes, terrified.
+It was not possible, he said, that they had been left behind?
+
+No, it was not possible. John had forgotten them; but he would
+remember; he would come back. In five minutes. Seven minutes. She had
+waited fifteen.
+
+The Belgian was muttering something. He complained of being left there.
+He said he was not anxious about himself, but about Mademoiselle.
+Mademoiselle ought not to have been left. She was sitting on the ground
+now, beside him.
+
+"It'll be all right," she said. "He'll come back." When he remembered he
+would come back.
+
+She had waited half an hour.
+
+Another shell. It had burst over there at the backs of the houses, beyond
+the stable.
+
+She wondered whether it would be safer to drag her man across the street
+under the wall of the Town Hall. They would be sure to aim at it and miss
+it, whereas any minute they might hit the stable.
+
+At the moment while she wondered there was a third tremendous explosion,
+the crash and roar of brickwork falling like coal down an enormous chute.
+It came from the other side of the street a little way down. It couldn't
+be far from the Town Hall. That settled it. Much better stay where they
+were. The Belgian had put his arm round her, drawing her to him, away
+from the noise and shock of the shell.
+
+It was clear now that John was not coming back. He had forgotten them.
+
+The Belgian's hold slackened; he dozed, falling against her and
+recovering himself with a jerk and begging her pardon. She drew down his
+head on to her shoulder and let it rest there. Her mind was soaked in the
+smell of his rank breath, of the warm sweat that oozed through his tunic,
+the hot, fetid smell that came through his unlaced boots. She didn't
+care; she was too sorry for him. She could feel nothing but the helpless
+pressure of his body against hers, nothing but her pity that hurt her and
+was exquisite like love. Yesterday she had thought it would be good to
+die with John. Now she thought it would be good to die with the wounded
+Belgian, since John had left her there to die.
+
+And again, she had a vehement desire for life, a horror of the unjust
+death John was bringing on them.
+
+But of course there wouldn't be any death. If nobody came she would walk
+back to Ghent and bring out the ambulance.
+
+If only he had shouted to her to carry the wounded man and come. In the
+minute between the concussion of the shell and the cranking of the
+engine. But she could see him rushing. If only she knew _why_ he had left
+them.... She wanted to get back to Ghent, to see John, to know. To know
+if John--if John really _was_--Nothing could be worse than not knowing.
+
+It didn't matter so much his forgetting her. The awful thing was his
+forgetting the wounded man. How could you forget a wounded man? When she
+remembered the Belgian's terrified hare's eyes she hated John.
+
+And, as she sat there supporting his head with her shoulder, she thought
+again. There must have been a wounded man in the house John had come out
+of. Was it possible that he had forgotten him, too?... He hadn't
+forgotten. She could see him looking back over his shoulder; looking at
+something that was lying there, that couldn't be anything but a wounded
+man. Or a dead man. Whatever it was, it had been the last thing he had
+seen; the last thing he had thought of before he made his dash. It
+wasn't possible that he had left a wounded man in there, alive. It was
+not possible.
+
+And all the time while she kept on telling herself that it was not
+possible she saw a wounded man in the room John had left; she saw his
+head turning to the doorway, and his eyes, frightened; she felt his
+anguish in the moment that he knew himself abandoned. Not forgotten.
+Abandoned.
+
+She would have to go over to the house and see. She must know whether the
+man was there or not there. She raised the Belgian's head, gently, from
+her shoulder. She would have to wake him and tell him what she was going
+to do, so that he mightn't think she had left him and be frightened.
+
+But the Belgian roused himself to a sudden virile determination.
+Mademoiselle must _not_ cross the road. It was too dangerous.
+Mademoiselle would be hit. He played on her pity with an innocent,
+cunning cajolery. "Mademoiselle must not leave me. I do not want
+to be left."
+
+"Only for one minute. One little minute. I think there's a wounded man,
+like you, Monsieur, in that house."
+
+"Ah--h--A wounded man?" He seemed to acknowledge the integrity of her
+purpose. "If only I were not wounded, if only I could crawl an inch, I
+would go instead of Mademoiselle."
+
+       *        * * * *
+
+The wounded man lay on the floor of the room in his corner by the
+fireplace where John had left him. His coat was rolled up under his head
+for a pillow. He lay on his side, with humped hips and knees drawn up,
+and one hand, half clenched, half relaxed, on his breast under the
+drooped chin; so that at first she thought he was alive, sleeping. She
+knelt down beside him and clasped his wrist; she unbuttoned his tunic
+and put in her hand under his shirt above the point of his heart. He was
+certainly dead. No pulse; no beat; no sign of breathing. Yet his body
+was warm still, and limp as if with sleep. He couldn't have been dead
+very long.
+
+And he was young. A boy. Not more than sixteen. John couldn't have left
+him.
+
+She wasn't certain. She was no nearer certainty so long as she didn't
+know when the boy had died. If only she knew--
+
+They hadn't unfastened his tunic and shirt to feel over his heart if he
+were dead. So he couldn't have been dead when they left him.... But there
+was Sutton. Billy wouldn't have left him unless he had been dead. Her
+mind worked rapidly, jumping from point to point, trying to find some
+endurable resting place.... He was so young, so small, so light. Light.
+It wouldn't take two to carry him. She could have picked him up and
+carried him herself. Billy had had the lame man to look after. He had
+left the boy to John. She saw John looking back over his shoulder.
+
+She got up and went through the house, through all the rooms, to see if
+there were any more of them that John had left there. She felt tired out
+and weak, sick with her belief, her fear of what John had done. The dead
+boy was alone in the house. She covered his face with her handkerchief
+and went back.
+
+The Belgian waited for her at the entrance to the yard. He had
+dragged himself there, crawling on his hands and knees. He smiled
+when he saw her.
+
+"I was coming to look for you, Mademoiselle."
+
+She had him safe beside her against the stable wall. He let his head rest
+on her shoulder now, glad of the protecting contact. She tried not to
+think about John. Something closed down between them. Black. Black;
+shutting him off, closing her heart against him, leaving her heart hard
+and sick. The light went slowly out of the street, out of the sky. The
+dark came, the dark sounding with the "Boom--Boom" of the guns, lit with
+spiked diamond flashes like falling stars.
+
+The Belgian had gone to sleep again when she heard the ambulance coming
+down the street.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Is that you, Charlotte?"
+
+"Billy--! What made you come?"
+
+"Conway. He's in a frantic funk. Said he'd lost you. He thought you'd
+gone on with me."
+
+How awful it would be if Billy knew.
+
+"It was my fault," she lied. "He told me to go on with you." She could
+hear him telling her to wait for him in the stable yard.
+
+"I'd have come before only I didn't see him soon enough. I had an
+operation.... Is that a wounded man you've got there? I suppose he lost
+him, too?"
+
+"He didn't know he was here."
+
+"I see."
+
+Then she remembered. Billy would know. Billy would tell her.
+
+"Billy--was that boy dead when you left him! The boy in the house
+over there."
+
+He was stooping to the Belgian, examining his bandages, and he didn't
+answer all at once. He seemed to be meditating.
+
+"Was he?" she repeated.
+
+It struck her that Billy was surprised.
+
+"Because--" She stopped there. She couldn't say to him, "I want to know
+whether John left him dead or alive."
+
+"He was dead all right." Sutton's voice came up slow and muffled out of
+his meditation.
+
+It was all right. She might have known. She might have known. Vaguely for
+a moment she wondered why Billy had come for her and not John; then she
+was frightened.
+
+"Billy--John isn't hurt, is he?"
+
+"No. Rather not. A bit done up. I made him go and lie down.... Look here,
+we must get out of this."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The McClane Corps were gathered on their side of the messroom. They
+greeted her with shouts of joy, but their eyes looked at her queerly, as
+if they knew something dreadful had happened to her.
+
+"You should have stood in with us, Charlotte," Mrs. Rankin was saying.
+"Then you wouldn't get mislaid among the shells." She was whispering.
+"Dr. McClane, if you took Charlotte out among the shells, would you run
+away and leave her there?"
+
+"I'd try not to."
+
+Oh yes. He wouldn't run away and leave her. But he wouldn't care where he
+took her. He wouldn't care whether a shell got her or not. But John
+cared. If only she knew _why_.... Their queer faces sobered her and
+suddenly she knew. She saw Sutton coming out of the house with the narrow
+shutters; she heard him shouting to her, "Come on, Charlotte, hurry up!"
+
+John must have heard him. He must really have thought that she had
+gone with him.
+
+But he must have known, too, that she wouldn't go. He must have known
+that if he told her to wait for him she would wait. So that--
+
+The voices of the McClane women ceased abruptly. One of them turned
+round. Charlotte saw John standing between the glasses of the two doors.
+He came in and she heard Mrs. Rankin calling out in her hard, insolent
+voice, "Well, Mr. Conway, so you've got in safe."
+
+She was always like that, hard and insolent, with her damned courage. As
+if courage were ever anything more than just being decent, and as if
+other people couldn't be decent too. She hated John because she couldn't
+make him come to her, couldn't make him look with pleasure at her
+beautiful, arrogant face. She disliked Sutton and McClane for the same
+reason, but she hated John. He treated her face with a hardness and
+insolence like her own. You could see her waiting for her revenge,
+watching every minute for a chance to stick her blade into him. He was
+pretending that he hadn't heard her.
+
+His hair stood up in pointed tufts, rumpled from his pillow. His eyes had
+a dazed, stupid look as if he were not perfectly awake. But at the sound
+of the rasping voice his mouth had tightened; it was pinched and sharp
+with pain. He didn't look at Mrs. Rankin. He came to her, Charlotte
+Redhead, straight; straight as if she had drawn him from his sleep.
+
+The McClane people got up, one after another, and went out.
+
+"Charlotte," he said, "did you really think I'd left you?"
+
+"I thought you'd left me. But I knew you hadn't."
+
+"You _knew_ it wasn't possible?"
+
+"Yes. Inside me I knew."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry. Sutton told me you were going on with him, and I
+thought you'd gone."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+She would remember for ever the talk they had on the balcony that day
+while Antwerp was falling.
+
+They were standing there, she and John Conway and Sutton, looking over
+the station and the railway lines to the open country beyond: the fields,
+the tall slender trees, the low mounds of the little hills, bristling and
+dark. Round the corner of the balcony they could see into the _Place_
+below; it was filled with a thick black crowd of refugees. Antwerp was
+falling. Presently the ambulance train would come in and they would have
+to go over there to the station with their stretchers and carry out the
+wounded. Meanwhile they waited.
+
+John brooded. His face was heavy and sombre with discontent. "No," he
+said. "No. It isn't good enough."
+
+"What isn't?"
+
+"What we're doing here. Going to all those little tin-pot places. The
+real fighting isn't down there. They ought to send us to Antwerp."
+
+"I suppose they send us where they think we're most wanted."
+
+"I don't believe they do. We were fools not to have insisted on going
+to Antwerp, instead of letting ourselves be stuck here in a rotten
+side show."
+
+"We've had enough to do, anyhow," said Sutton.
+
+"And there isn't anybody but us and Mac to do it," Charlotte said.
+
+John's eyebrows twisted. "Yes; but we're not _in_ it. I want to be in it.
+In the big thing; the big dangerous thing."
+
+Sutton sighed and got up and left them. John waited for the closing
+of the door.
+
+"Does it strike you," he said, "that Billy isn't very keen?"
+
+"No. It doesn't. What do you mean?"
+
+"I notice that he's jolly glad when he can get an indoor job."
+
+"That's because they're short of surgeons. He only wants to do what's
+most useful."
+
+"I didn't say he had cold feet."
+
+"Of course he hasn't. Billy would go to Antwerp like a shot if they'd
+let him. He feels just as we do about it. That's why he got up and
+went away."
+
+"He'd go. But he wouldn't enjoy it."
+
+"Oh, don't talk about 'enjoying.'"
+
+"Sharlie, you don't mean to say that _you're_ not keen?"
+
+"No. It's only that I don't care as much as I did about what you call the
+romance of it; and I do care more about the solid work. It seems to me
+that it doesn't matter who does it so long as it's done."
+
+"I'd very much rather I did it than McClane. So would you."
+
+"Yes. I would. But I'd be sorry if poor little Mac didn't get any of it.
+And all the time I know it doesn't matter which of us it is. It doesn't
+matter whether we're in danger or out of danger, or whether we're in the
+big thing or a little one."
+
+"Don't you want to be in the big thing?"
+
+"Yes. I _want_. But I know my wanting doesn't matter. I don't matter.
+None of us matters."
+
+That was how she felt about it now that it had come to defeat, now that
+Antwerp was falling. Yesterday they, she and John, had been vivid
+entities, intensely real, living and moving in the war as in a
+containing space that was real enough, since it was there, but real like
+hell or heaven or God, not to be grasped or felt in its reality; only
+the stretch of it that they covered was real, the roads round Ghent, the
+burning villages, the places where they served, Berlaere and Melle,
+Quatrecht and Zele; the wounded men. Yesterday her thoughts about John
+had mattered, her doubt and fear of him and her pain; her agony of
+desire that he should be, should be always, what she loved him for
+being; and her final certainty had been the one important, the one real
+thing. To-day she had difficulty in remembering all that, as if _they_
+hadn't really been. To-day they were unimportant to themselves and to
+each other; small, not quite real existences, enveloped by an immense
+reality that closed in on them; alive; black, palpitating defeat. It
+made nothing of them, of their bodies nothing but the parts they worked
+with: feet and hands. Nothing mattered, nothing existed but the war, and
+the armies, the Belgian army, beaten.
+
+Antwerp was falling. And afterwards it would be Ghent, and then Ostend.
+And then there would be no more Belgium.
+
+But John wouldn't hear of it. Ghent wouldn't fall.
+
+"It won't fall because it isn't a fortified city," she objected. "But
+it'll surrender. It'll have to."
+
+"It won't. If the Germans come anywhere near we shall drive them back."
+
+"They _are_ near. They're all round in a ring with only a little narrow
+opening up _there_. And the ring's getting closer."
+
+"It's easier to push back a narrow ring than a wide one."
+
+"It's easier to break through a thin ring than a thick one, and who's
+going to push?"
+
+"We are. The British. We'll come pouring in, hundreds of thousands of us,
+through that little narrow opening up there."
+
+"If we only would--"
+
+"Of course we shall. If I thought we wouldn't, if I thought we were going
+to let the Belgians down, if we _betrayed_ them--My God! I'd kill
+myself.... No. No, I wouldn't. That wouldn't hurt enough. I'd give up my
+damned country and be a naturalized Belgian. Why, they trust us. They
+_trust_ us to save Antwerp."
+
+"If we don't, that wouldn't be betrayal."
+
+"It would. The worst kind. It would be like betraying a wounded man; or a
+woman. Like me betraying you, Jeanne. You needn't look like that. It's so
+bad that it can't happen."
+
+Through the enveloping sadness she felt a prick of joy, seeing him so
+valiant, so unbeaten in his soul. It supported her certainty. His soul
+was so big that nothing could satisfy it but the big thing, the big
+dangerous thing. He wouldn't even believe that Antwerp was falling.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She knew. She knew. There was not the smallest doubt about it any more.
+She saw it happen.
+
+It happened in the village near Lokeren, the village whose name she
+couldn't remember. The Germans had taken Lokeren that morning; they were
+_in_ Lokeren. At any minute they might be in the village.
+
+You had to pass through a little town to get to it. And there they had
+been told that they must not go on. And they had gone on. And in the
+village they were told that they must go back and they had not gone back.
+They had been given five minutes to get in their wounded and they had
+been there three-quarters of an hour, she and John working together, and
+Trixie Rankin with McClane and two of his men.
+
+Charlotte had been sorry for Sutton and Gwinnie and the rest of McClane's
+corps who had not come out with them to this new place, but had been sent
+back again to Melle where things had been so quiet all morning that they
+hadn't filled their ambulances, and half of them had hung about doing
+nothing. She had fretted at the stupidity which had sent them where they
+were not wanted. But here there were not enough hands for the stretchers,
+and Charlotte was wanted every second of the time. From the first minute
+you could see what you were in for.
+
+The retreat.
+
+And for an instant, in the blind rush and confusion of it, she had lost
+sight of John. She had turned the car round and left it with its nose
+pointing towards Ghent. Trixie Rankin and the McClane men were at the
+front cars taking out the stretchers; John and McClane were going up the
+road. She had got out her own stretcher and was following them when the
+battery came tearing down the road and cut them off. It tore headlong,
+swerving and careening with great rattling and crashing noises. She could
+see the faces of the men, thrown back, swaying; there was no terror in
+them, only a sort of sullen anger and resentment.
+
+She stood on the narrow sandy track beside the causeway to let it pass,
+and when a gap came in the train she dashed through to get to John. And
+John was not there. When all the artillery had passed he was not there;
+only McClane, going on up the middle of the street by himself.
+
+She ran after him and asked him what had happened to John. He turned,
+dreamy and deliberate, utterly unperturbed. John, he said, had gone on to
+look for a wounded man who was said to have been taken into one of those
+houses there, on the right, in the lane. She went down the lane with her
+stretcher and McClane waited for them at the top. The doors of the houses
+were open; Flemish women stood outside, looking up to the street. There
+was one house with a shut door, a tall green door; she thought that would
+be the one that John had gone into. She rapped and he opened the door and
+came striding out, holding his head high. He shut the door quietly and
+looked at her, an odd look, piercing and grave.
+
+"Dead," he said.
+
+And when McClane met them he said it again, "Dead."
+
+The wounded were being brought down from Lokeren in trams that ran on to
+a siding behind a little fir plantation outside the village. At the wide
+top of the street a table of boards and trestles stood by the foot track,
+and the stretchers were laid on it as they came in, and the wounded had
+their first bandaging and dressings there. McClane took up his place by
+this table, and the stretcher bearers went backwards and forwards between
+the village and the plantation.
+
+Beyond the plantation the flagged road stretched flat and grey, then bent
+in a deep curve, and on the wider sweep of the curve a row of tall,
+slender trees stood up like a screen.
+
+It would be round the turn of the road under the trees that the Germans
+would come when they came. You couldn't lose this sense of them, coming
+on behind there, not yet seen, but behind, coming on, pursuing the
+retreat of the batteries. Every now and then they found themselves
+looking up towards the turn. The grey, bending sweep and the screen of
+tall trees had a fascination for them, a glamour; and above the movements
+of their hands and feet their minds watched, intent, excited, but without
+fear. There was no fear in the village. The women came out of their
+houses carrying cups of water for the men's thirst; they seemed to be
+concerned, not with the coming of the Germans, but with the bringing in
+of the wounded and the presence of the English ambulance in their street.
+
+And the four stretcher bearers came and went, from house to house and
+between the village and the plantation, working, working steadily. Yet
+they were aware, all the time, of the pursuing terror, behind the turn of
+the road; they were held still in their intentness. Over all of them was
+a quiet, fixed serenity. McClane's body had lost its eager, bustling
+energy and was still; his face was grave, preoccupied and still; only
+Trixie Rankin went rushing, and calling out to her quiet man in a fierce,
+dominating excitement.
+
+And in John's face and in his alert body there was happiness, happiness
+that was almost ecstasy; it ran through and shone from him, firm and
+still, like a flame that couldn't go out. It penetrated her and made her
+happy and satisfied and sure of him. She had seen it leap up in him as he
+swung himself into the seat beside her when they started. He was
+restless, restless every day until they were sent out; he couldn't wait
+in peace before they had set off on the adventure, as if he were afraid
+that at the last minute something would happen to dash his chance from
+him. She couldn't find this passionate uneasiness in herself; she waited
+with a stolid trust in the event; but she had something of his feeling.
+After all, it was there, the romance, the fascination, the glamour; you
+couldn't deny it any more than you could deny the beating of the blood in
+your veins. It was their life.
+
+They had been in the village three quarters of an hour. John and
+Charlotte waited while McClane at his table was putting the last bandage
+on the last wound. In another minute they would be gone. It was then that
+the Belgian Red Cross man came running to them. Had they taken a man with
+a wound in his back? A bad wound? As big as that? No? Then he was still
+here, and he had got to take him to the ambulance. No, he didn't know
+where he was. He might be in one of those houses where they took in the
+wounded, or he might be up there by the tramway in the plantation. Would
+they take a stretcher and find him? _He_ had to go back to the tramway.
+The last tram was coming in from Lokeren. He ran back, fussy and a little
+frightened.
+
+John shouted out, "Hold on, McClane, there's another tram coming," and
+set off up the street. They had taken all the men out of the houses;
+therefore the man with the bad wound must have been left somewhere by the
+plantation. They went there, carrying their stretcher, going, going up to
+the last minute, in delight, in the undying thrill of the danger.
+
+The wounded man was not in the plantation. As they looked for him the
+tram from Lokeren slid in, Red Cross men on the steps, clinging. The
+doors were flung open and the wounded men came out, stumbling, falling,
+pushing each other. Somebody cried, "No stretchers! Damned bad
+management. With the Germans on our backs." A Red Cross man, with a
+puffed white face, stood staring at John and Charlotte, stupefied.
+
+"Are they coming?" John said.
+
+"Coming? They'll be here in ten minutes--five minutes." He snarled, a
+terrified animal.
+
+He had caught sight of their stretcher and snatched at it, thrusting out
+his face, the face of a terrified animal, open mouth, and round,
+palpitating eyes. He lifted his hand as though he would have struck at
+Charlotte, but John pushed him back. He was brutalized, made savage and
+cruel by terror; he had a lust to hurt.
+
+"You can't have our stretcher," Charlotte said.
+
+She could see they didn't want it. This was the last tram. The serious
+cases had been sent on first. All these men could walk or hobble along
+somehow with help. But they were the last in the retreat of the wounded;
+they were the men who had been nearest to the enemy, and they had known
+the extremity of fear.
+
+"You can't have it. It's wanted for a badly wounded man."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"We don't know. We're looking for him."
+
+"Ah, pah! We can't wait till you find him. Do you think we're going to
+stand here to be taken?--For one man!"
+
+They went on through the plantation, stumbling and growling, dragging the
+wounded out into the road.
+
+"If," Charlotte said, "we only knew where he was."
+
+John stood there silent; his head was turned towards the far end of the
+wood, the Lokeren end. The terror of the wood held him. He seemed to be
+listening; listening, but only half awake.
+
+Here, where the line stopped, a narrow track led downwards out of the
+wood. Charlotte started to go along it. "Come on," she said. She saw him
+coming, quickly, but with drawn, sleep-walking feet. The track led into a
+muddy alley at the back of the village.
+
+There was a house there and a woman stood at the door, beckoning. She ran
+up to them. "He's here," she whispered, "he's here."
+
+He lay on his side on the flagged floor of the kitchen. His shirt was
+ripped open, and in his white back, below the shoulder blade, there was a
+deep red wound, like a pit, with a wide mouth, gaping. He was ugly, a
+Flamand; he had a puffed face with pushed out lips and a scrub of red
+beard; but Charlotte loved him.
+
+They carried him out through the wood on to the road. He lay inert,
+humped up, heavy. They had to go slowly, so slowly that they could
+see the wounded and the Red Cross men going on far before them, down
+the street.
+
+The flagged road swayed and swung with the swinging bulge of the
+stretcher as they staggered. The shafts kept on slipping and slipping;
+her grasp closed, tighter and tighter; her arms ached in their sockets;
+but her fingers and the palms of her hands were firm and dry; they could
+keep their hold.
+
+They had only gone a few yards along the road when suddenly John
+stopped and sank his end of the stretcher, compelling Charlotte to
+lower hers too.
+
+"What did you do that for?"
+
+"We can't, Charlotte. He's too damned heavy."
+
+"If I can, you can."
+
+He didn't move. He stood there, staring with his queer, hypnotised eyes,
+at the man lying in the middle of the road, at the red pit in the white
+back, at the wide, ragged lips of the wound, gaping.
+
+"For goodness' sake pick him up. It isn't the moment for resting."
+
+"Look here--it isn't good enough. We can't get him there in time."
+
+"You're--you're _not_ going to leave him!"
+
+"We've got to leave him. We can't let the whole lot be taken just
+for one man."
+
+"We'll be taken if you stand here talking."
+
+He went on a step or two, slouching; then stood still, waiting for her,
+ashamed. He was changed from himself, seized and driven by the fear that
+had possessed the men in the plantation. She could see it in his
+retreating eyes.
+
+She cried out--her voice sounded sharp and strange--"John--! You _can't_
+leave him."
+
+The wounded man who had lain inert, thinking that they were only resting,
+now turned his head at her cry. She saw his eyes shaking, palpitating
+with terror.
+
+"You've frightened him," she said. "I won't have him frightened."
+
+She didn't really believe that John was going. He went slowly, still
+ashamed, and stopped again and waited for her.
+
+"Come back," she said, "this minute, and pick up that stretcher
+and get on."
+
+"I tell you it isn't good enough."
+
+"Oh, go then, if you're such a damned coward, and send Mac to me.
+Or Trixie."
+
+"They'll have gone."
+
+He was walking backwards, his face set towards the turn of the road.
+
+"Come on, you little fool. You can't carry him."
+
+"I can. And I shall, if Mac doesn't come."
+
+"You'll be taken," he shouted.
+
+"I don't care. If I'm taken, I'm taken. I shall carry him on my back."
+
+While John still went backwards she thought: It's all right. If he sees
+I'm not coming he won't go. He'll come back to the stretcher.
+
+But John had turned and was running.
+
+Even then she didn't realise that he was running away, that she was left
+there with the wounded man. Things didn't happen like that. People ran
+away all of a sudden, in panics, because they couldn't help it; they
+didn't begin by going slowly and stopping to argue and turning round and
+walking backwards; they were gone before they knew where they were. She
+believed that he was going for the ambulance. One moment she believed it
+and the next she knew better. As she waited in the road (conscious of the
+turn, the turn with its curving screen of tall trees) her knowledge, her
+dreadful knowledge, came to her, dark and evil, creeping up and up. John
+wasn't coming back. He would no more come back than he had come back the
+other day. Sutton had come. The other day had been like to-day. John was
+like that.
+
+Her mind stood still in amazement, seeing, seeing clearly, what John was
+like. For a moment she forgot about the Germans.
+
+She thought: I don't believe Mac's gone. He wouldn't go until he'd got
+them all in. Mac would come.
+
+Then she thought about the Germans again. All this was making it much
+more dangerous for Mac and everybody, with the Germans coming round the
+corner any minute; she had no business to stand there thinking; she must
+pick that man up on her back and go on.
+
+She stooped down and turned him over on his chest. Then, with great
+difficulty, she got him up on to his feet; she took him by the wrists
+and, stooping again, swung him on to her shoulder. These acts, requiring
+attention and drawing on all her energy, dulled the pain of her
+knowledge. When she stood up with him she saw John and McClane coming to
+her. She lowered her man gently back on to the stretcher.
+
+The Flamand, thinking that she had given it up and that he was now
+abandoned to the Germans, groaned.
+
+"It's all right," she said. "He's coming."
+
+She saw McClane holding John by the arm, and in her pain there was a
+sharper pang. She had the illusion of his being dragged back unwillingly.
+
+McClane smiled as he came to her. He glanced at the Flamand lying heaped
+on his stretcher.
+
+"He's been too much for you, has he?"
+
+"Too much--? Yes."
+
+Instantly she saw that John had lied, and instantly she backed his lie.
+She hated McClane thinking she had failed; but anything was better than
+his knowing the truth.
+
+John and McClane picked up the stretcher and went on quickly. Charlotte
+walked beside the Flamand with her hand on his shoulder to comfort him.
+Again her pity was like love.
+
+From the top of the village she could see the opening of the lane. Down
+there was the house with the tall green door where the dead man was. John
+had _said_ he was dead.
+
+Supposing he wasn't? Or supposing he was still warm and limp like the boy
+at Melle? She must know; it was a thing she must know for certain, or she
+would never have any peace. And when the Flamand was laid out on
+McClane's table, while McClane dressed his wound, she slipped down the
+lane and opened the green door.
+
+The man lay on a row of packing cases with his feet parted. She put one
+hand over his heart and the other on his forehead under the lock of
+bloodstained hair. He was dead: stiff dead and cold. His tunic and shirt
+had been unbuttoned to ease his last breathing. She had a queer baffled
+feeling of surprise and incompleteness, as if some awful sense in her
+would have been satisfied if she had seen that he had been living when
+John had said that he was dead. To-day would then have been linked on
+firmly to the other day.
+
+John stood at the top of the lane. He scowled at her as she came.
+
+"What do you think you're doing!" he said.
+
+"I went to that house--to see if the man was dead."
+
+"You'd no business to. I told you he was dead."
+
+"I wanted to make sure."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening she had just gone to her room when somebody knocked at her
+door. McClane stood outside, straddling, his way when he had got
+something important on hand. He asked if he might come in and speak to
+her for a minute.
+
+She sat down on the edge of her bed and he sat on Gwinnie's, elbows
+crooked out, hands planted on wide parted knees; he leaned forward,
+looking at her, his face innocent and yet astute; his thick,
+expressionless eyes clear now and penetrating. He seemed to be fairly
+humming with activity left over from the excitement of the day. He was
+always either dreamy and withdrawn, or bursting, bursting with energy,
+and at odd moments he would drop off suddenly to sleep with his chin
+doubled on his breast, recovering from his energy. Perhaps he had just
+waked up now to this freshness.
+
+"Look here," he said. "You didn't break down. That man wasn't too
+heavy for you."
+
+"He was. He was an awful weight. I couldn't have carried him a yard."
+
+"That won't do, Charlotte. I _saw_ you take him on your back."
+
+She could feel the blood rising up in her face before him. He was hurting
+her with shame.
+
+He persisted, merciless. "It was Conway who broke down."
+
+She had tears now.
+
+"Nobody knows," he said gently, "but you and me.... I want to talk to
+you about him. He must be got away from the Front. He must be got out
+of Belgium."
+
+"You always wanted to get him away."
+
+"Only because I saw he would break down."
+
+"How could you tell?"
+
+"I'm a psychotherapist. It's my business to tell."
+
+But she was still on the defensive.
+
+"You never liked him."
+
+"I neither like nor dislike him. To me Conway is simply a sick man. If I
+could cure him--"
+
+"Can't you?"
+
+"Not as you think. I can't turn his cowardice into courage. I might turn
+it into something else but not that. That's why I say he ought to go
+home. You must tell him."
+
+"I can't. Couldn't Billy tell him?"
+
+"Well, hardly. He's his commandant."
+
+"Can't _you_?"
+
+"Not I. You know what he thinks about me."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That I've got a grudge against him. That I'm jealous of him. You thought
+it yourself."
+
+"Did I?"
+
+"You did. Look here, I say--I wanted to take you three into my corps. And
+you'd have been sent home after the Berlaere affair if I hadn't spoken
+for you. So much for my jealousy."
+
+"I only thought you were jealous of John."
+
+"Why, it was I who got him sent out that first day."
+
+"_Was_ it?"
+
+"Yes. I wanted to give him his chance. And," he added meditatively, "I
+wanted to know whether I was right. I wanted to see what he would do."
+
+"I don't think it now," she said, reverting.
+
+"_That's_ all right."
+
+He laughed his brief, mirthless laugh, the assent of his egoism. But his
+satisfaction had nothing personal in it. He was pleased because justice,
+abstract justice, had been done. But she suspected his sincerity. He did
+things for you, not because he liked you, but for some other reason; and
+he would be so carried away by doing them that he would behave as though
+he liked you when he didn't, when all the time you couldn't for one
+minute rouse him from his immense indifference. She knew he liked her for
+sticking to her post and for taking the wounded man on her back, because
+that was the sort of thing he would have done himself. And he had only
+helped John because he wanted to see what he would do. Therefore she
+suspected his sincerity.
+
+But, no; he wasn't jealous.
+
+"And now," he went on, "you must get him to go home at once, or he'll
+have a bad break-down. You've got to tell him, Charlotte."
+
+She stood up, ready. "Where is he?"
+
+"By himself. In his room."
+
+She went to him there.
+
+He was sitting at his little table. He had been trying to write a letter,
+but he had pushed it from him and left it. You could see he was absorbed
+in some bitter meditation. She seated herself at the head of his bed, on
+his pillow, where she could look down at him.
+
+"John," she said, "you can't go on like this--"
+
+"Like what?"
+
+He held his head high; but the excited, happy light had gone out of his
+eyes; they stared, not as though they saw anything, but withdrawn, as
+though he were contemplating the fearful memory of his fear.
+
+And she was sorry for him, so sorry that she couldn't bear it. She bit
+her lip lest she should sob out with pain.
+
+"Oh--" she said, and her pain stopped her.
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about--'going on like this.'
+I'm--going--on."
+
+"What's the good? You've had enough. If I were you I should go home. You
+know you can't stand it."
+
+"What? Go and leave my cars to Sutton?"
+
+"McClane could take them."
+
+"I don't know how long McClane signed on for. _I_ signed on for the
+duration of the war."
+
+"There wasn't any signing on."
+
+"Well, if you like, I swore I wouldn't go back till it was over."
+
+"Yes, and supposing it happens again."
+
+"What _should_ happen again?"
+
+"What happened this afternoon.... And it wasn't the first time."
+
+"Do you _know_ what happened?"
+
+"I _saw_ what happened. You simply went to pieces."
+
+"My dear Charlotte, _you_ went to pieces, if you like."
+
+"I know that's what you told Mac. And _he_ knows how true it is."
+
+"Does he? Well--he shan't have my ambulances. You don't suppose I'm
+going to let McClane fire me out of Belgium?... I suppose he put you up
+to this...."
+
+He stood up as a sign to her to leave him. "I don't see that there's
+anything more to be said."
+
+"There's one thing." (She slid to her feet.) "_You_ swore you'd stick
+till the war's over. _I_ swore, if I had to choose between you and the
+wounded, it shouldn't be you."
+
+"You haven't got to choose. You've only got to obey orders...."
+
+His face stiffened. He looked like some hard commander imposing an
+unanswerable will.
+
+"... The next time," he said, "you'll be good enough to remember that I
+settle what risks are to be taken, not you."
+
+Her soul stiffened, too, and was hard. She stood up against him with her
+shoulder to the door.
+
+"It sounds all right," she said. "But the _next time_ I'll carry him on
+my back all the way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She went to bed with her knowledge. He funked and lied. The two things
+she couldn't stand. His funk and his lying were a real part of him. And
+it was as if she had always known it, as if all the movements of her mind
+had been an effort to escape her knowledge.
+
+She opened her eyes. Something hurt them. Gwinnie, coming late to bed,
+had turned on the electric light. And as she rolled over, turning her
+back to the light and to Gwinnie, her mind shifted. It saw suddenly the
+flame leaping in John's face. His delight in danger, that happiness he
+felt when he went out to meet it, happiness springing up bright and new
+every day; that was a real part of him. She couldn't doubt it. She knew.
+And she was left with her queer, baffled sense of surprise and
+incompleteness. She couldn't see the nature of the bond between these two
+realities.
+
+That was his secret, his mystery.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+She woke very early in the morning with one clear image in her mind: what
+John had done yesterday.
+
+Her mind seemed to have watched all night behind her sleep to attack her
+with it in the first moment of waking. She had got to come to a clear
+decision about that. If Billy Sutton had done it, or one of McClane's
+chauffeurs, her decision would have been very clear. She would have said
+he was a filthy coward and dismissed him from her mind. But John couldn't
+be dismissed. His funk wasn't like other people's funk. Coupled with his
+ecstatic love of danger it had an unreal, fantastic quality. Somehow she
+couldn't regard his love of danger as an unreal, fantastic thing. It had
+come too near her; it had moved her too profoundly and too long; she had
+shared it as she might have shared his passion.
+
+So that, even in the sharp, waking day she felt his fear as a secret,
+mysterious thing. She couldn't account for it. She didn't, considering
+the circumstances, she didn't judge the imminence of the Germans to be a
+sufficient explanation. It was as incomprehensible to-day as it had been
+yesterday.
+
+But there was fear and fear. There was the cruel, animal fear of the
+Belgians in the plantation, fear that was dark to itself and had no
+sadness in it; and there was John's fear that knew itself and was sad.
+The unbearable, inconsolable sadness of John's fear! After all, you could
+think of him as a gentle thing, caught unaware in a trap and tortured.
+And who was she to judge him? She in her "armour" and he in his coat of
+nerves. His knowledge and his memory of his fear would be like a raw open
+wound in his mind; and her knowledge of it would be a perpetual irritant,
+rubbing against it and keeping up the sore. Last night she hadn't done
+anything to heal him; she had only hurt.... And if she gave John up his
+wound would never heal. She owed a sort of duty to the wound.
+
+Of course, like John, she would go on remembering what had happened
+yesterday. She would never get over it any more than he would. Yet,
+after all, yesterday was only one day out of his life. There might never
+be another like it. And to set against yesterday there was their first
+day at Berlaere and the day afterwards at Melle; there was yesterday
+morning and there was that other day at Melle. She had no business to
+suppose that he had done then what he did yesterday. They had settled
+that once for all at the time, when he said Billy Sutton had told him
+she was going back with him. It all hung on that. If that was right, the
+rest was right....
+
+Supposing Billy hadn't told him anything of the sort, though? She would
+never know that. She couldn't say to Billy: "_Did_ you tell John I was
+going back with you? Because; if you didn't--" She would have to leave
+that as it was, not quite certain.... And she couldn't be quite certain
+whether the boy had been dead or alive. And ... No. She couldn't get over
+it, John's cowardice. It had destroyed the unique, beautiful happiness
+she had had with him.
+
+For it was no use saying that courage, physical courage, didn't count.
+She could remember a long conversation she had had with George Corfield,
+the man who wanted to marry her, about that. He had said courage was the
+least thing you could have. That only meant that, whatever else you
+hadn't, you must have that. It was a sort of trust. You were trusted not
+to betray defenceless things. A coward was a person who betrayed
+defenceless things. George had said that the world's adoration of courage
+was the world's cowardice, its fear of betrayal. That was a question for
+cowards to settle among themselves. The obligation not to betray
+defenceless things remained. It was so simple and obvious that people
+took it for granted; they didn't talk about it. They didn't talk about it
+because it was so deep and sacred, like honour and like love; so that,
+when John had talked about it she had always felt that he was her lover,
+saying the things that other men might not say, things he couldn't have
+said to any other woman.
+
+It was inconceivable that he--It couldn't have happened. As he had said
+of the defeat of Belgium, it was so bad that it couldn't happen. Odd,
+that the other day she had accepted at once a thing she didn't know for
+certain, while now she fought fiercely against a thing she knew; and
+always the memory of it, returning, beat her down.
+
+She had to make up her mind on what terms she would live with it and
+whether she would live with it at all. Supposing it happened again?
+Supposing you had always to go in fear of its happening?... It mightn't
+happen. Funk might be a thing that attacked you like an illness, or like
+drink, in fits, with long, calm intervals between. She wondered what it
+would feel like to be subject to attacks. Perhaps you would recover; you
+would be on the look-out, and when you felt another fit coming on you
+could stave it off or fight it down. And the first time wouldn't count
+because you had had no warning. It wouldn't be fair to give him up
+because of the first time.
+
+He would have given her up, he would have left her to the Germans--Yes;
+but if she broke with him now she would never get beyond that thought,
+she would never get beyond yesterday; she would always see it, the
+flagged road swinging with the swinging bulge of the stretcher, the
+sudden stopping, the Flamand with his wound, the shafts of the stretcher,
+suddenly naked, sticking out; and then all the fantastic, incredible
+movements of John's flight. Her mind would separate from him on that,
+closing everything down, making his act eternal.
+
+And, after all, the Germans hadn't come round the corner. Perhaps he
+wouldn't have left her if they had really come. How did she know what he
+wouldn't have done?
+
+No. That was thin. Thin. She couldn't take herself in quite in that way.
+It was the way she had tried with Gibson Herbert. When he did anything
+she loathed she used to pretend he hadn't done it. But with John, if she
+didn't give him up, her eyes must always be open. Perhaps they would get
+beyond yesterday. Perhaps she would see other things, go on with him to
+something new, forgetting. Her unique, beautiful happiness was smashed.
+Still, there might be some other happiness, beautiful, though not with
+the same beauty.
+
+If John had got the better of his fear--She thought of all the men she
+had ever heard of who had done that, coming out in the end heroic,
+triumphant.
+
+      *       * * * *
+
+Three things, three little things that happened that morning, that showed
+the way his mind was working. Things that she couldn't get over, that she
+would never forget.
+
+John standing on the hospital steps, watching Trixie Rankin and Alice
+Bartrum as they started with the ambulances; the fierce fling of his
+body, turning away.
+
+His voice saying, "I loathe those women. There's Alice Bartrum--I saw her
+making eyes at Sutton over a spouting artery. As for Mrs. Rankin they
+ought to intern her. She oughtn't to be allowed within ten miles of any
+army. That's one thing I like about McClane. He can't stand that sort of
+thing any more than I can."
+
+"How about Gwinnie and me?"
+
+"Gwinnie hangs her beastly legs about all over the place. So do you."
+
+John standing at the foot of the stairs, looking at the Antwerp men.
+Their heads and faces were covered with a white mask of cotton wool like
+a diver's helmet, three small holes in each white mask for mouth and
+eyes. They were the men whose faces had been burned by fire at Antwerp.
+
+"Come away," she said. But he still stood, fascinated, hypnotised by the
+white masks.
+
+"If I were to stick there, doing nothing, looking at the wounded, I
+should go off my head."
+
+"My God! So should I. Those everlasting wounds. They make you dream
+about them. Disgusting dreams. I never really see the wound, but I'm
+just going to see it. I know it's going to be more horrible than any
+wound I've ever seen. And then I wake.... That's why I don't look at
+them more than I can help."
+
+"You're looking at them now," she said.
+
+"Oh, them. That's nothing. Cotton wool."
+
+And she, putting her hand on his arm to draw him up the stairs, away.
+John shaking her hands off and his queer voice rising. "I wish you
+wouldn't do that, Charlotte. You know I hate it."
+
+He had never said anything to her like that before. It hadn't struck her
+before that, changed to himself, he would change to her. He hadn't got
+over last night. She had hurt him; her knowledge of his cowardice hurt
+him; and this was how he showed his pain.
+
+She thought: Here's Antwerp falling and Belgium beaten. And all those
+wounded. And the dead.... And here am I, bothering about these little
+things, as if they mattered. Three little things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fire from the battlefield had raked the village street as they came
+in; but it had ceased now. The curé had been through it all, going up and
+down, helping with the stretchers. John was down there in the wine-shop,
+where the soldiers were, looking for more wounded.
+
+They had found five in the stable yard, waiting to be taken away; they
+had moved four of them into the ambulance. The fifth, shot through the
+back of his head, still lay on the ground on a stretcher that dripped
+blood. Charlotte stood beside him.
+
+The curé came to her there. He was slender and lean in his black cassock.
+He had a Red Cross brassard on his sleeve, and in one hand he carried his
+missal and in the other the Host and the holy oils in a little bag of
+purple silk. He looked down at the stretcher and he looked at Charlotte,
+smiling faintly.
+
+"Where is Monsieur?" he said.
+
+"In the wine-shop, looking for wounded."
+
+She thought: He isn't looking, for them. He's skulking there, out of the
+firing. He'll always be like that.
+
+It had begun again. The bullets whistled in the air and rapped on the
+stone causeway, and ceased. The curé glanced down the street towards the
+place they had come from and smiled again.
+
+She liked his lean dark face and the long lines that came in it when it
+smiled. It despised the firing, it despised death, it despised everything
+that could be done to him there. And it was utterly compassionate.
+
+"Then," he said, "it is for you and me to carry him, Mademoiselle." He
+stooped to the stretcher.
+
+Between them they lifted him very slowly and gently into the ambulance.
+
+"There, Monsieur, at the bottom."
+
+At the bottom because of the steady drip, drip, that no bandaging could
+staunch. He lay straight and stiff, utterly unconcerned, and his feet in
+their enormous boots, slightly parted, stuck out beyond the stretcher.
+The four others sat in a row down one side of the car and stared at him.
+
+The curé climbed in after him, carrying the Host. He knelt there,
+where the blood from the smashed head oozed through the bandages and
+through the canvas of the stretchers to the floor and to the skirts of
+his cassock.
+
+The Last Sacrament. Charlotte waited till it was over, standing stolidly
+by the tail of the car. She could have cried then because of the sheer
+beauty of the curé's act, even while she wondered whether perhaps the
+wafer on his tongue might not choke the dying man.
+
+The curé hovered on the edge of the car, stooping with a certain
+awkwardness; she took from him his missal and his purple bag as he
+gathered his cassock about him and came down.
+
+"Can I do anything, Monsieur?"
+
+"No, Mademoiselle. It _is_ done."
+
+His eyes smiled at her; but his lips were quivering as he took again
+his missal and his purple bag. She watched him going on slowly down the
+street till he turned into the wine-shop. She wondered: Had he seen?
+Did he know why John was there? In another minute John came out,
+hurrying to the car.
+
+He glanced down at the blood stains by the back step; then he looked in;
+and when he saw the man lying on the stretcher he turned on her in fury.
+
+"What are you thinking of? I told you you weren't to take him."
+
+"I had to. I couldn't leave him there. I thought--"
+
+"You've no business to think."
+
+"Well, but the curé--"
+
+"The curé doesn't know anything about it."
+
+"I don't care. If he's in a clean bed--if they take his boots off--"
+
+"I told you they can't spare clean beds for corpses. He'll be dead before
+you can get him there."
+
+"Not if we're quick."
+
+"Nonsense. We must get him out of that."
+
+He seized the handle of the stretcher and began pulling; she hung on to
+his arm and stopped that.
+
+"No. No," she said. "You shan't touch him."
+
+He flung her arm off and turned. "You fool," he said. "You fool."
+
+She looked at him steadily, a long look that remembered, that made
+him remember.
+
+"There isn't time," she said. "They'll begin _firing_ in another minute."
+
+"Damn you." But he had turned, slinking round the corner of the hood to
+the engine. While he cranked it up she thought of the kit that one of the
+men had left there in the yard. She made a dash and fetched it, and as
+she threw it on the floor the car started. She snatched at the rope and
+swung herself up on to the step. The dying man lay behind her, straight
+and stiff; his feet in their heavy boots stuck out close under her hand.
+
+The four men nodded and grinned at her. They protected her. They
+understood.
+
+If only she could get him into a clean bed. If only she had had time
+to take his boots off. It would be all right if only she could bring
+him in alive.
+
+He was still alive when they got into Ghent.
+
+She had forgotten John and it was not until they came to take out the
+stretcher that she was again aware of him. They had drawn up before the
+steps of the hospital; he had got down and was leaning sideways, staring
+under the stretcher.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You can see what it is. Blood."
+
+From the hole in the man's head, through the soaked bandages, it still
+dripped, dripped with a light sound; it had made a glairy pool on the
+floor of the ambulance.
+
+"Don't look at it," she said. "It'll make you sick. You know you can't
+stand it."
+
+"Oh. I can't _stand_ it, can't I?"
+
+He straightened himself. He threw back his head; his upper lip lifted,
+stretched tight and thin above the clean white teeth. His eyes looked
+down at her, narrowed, bright slits under dropped lids.
+
+"John--I want to get him in before he dies."
+
+"All right. Get in under there. Take his head."
+
+"Hadn't I better take his feet?"
+
+"You'd better take what you're told to."
+
+She stiffened to the weight, heaved up her shoulder. Two men came running
+down the steps to help her as John pulled.
+
+"They'll be glad," he said, "to see him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was in the yard of the hospital, swabbing out the car, when John
+came to her.
+
+The back and side of the hospital, the long barracks of the annex and the
+wall at the bottom enclosed a waste place of ochreish clay. A long wooden
+shed, straw-white and new, was built out under the red brick of the
+annex. She thought it was a garage. John came out of the door of the
+shed. He beckoned to her as he came.
+
+"Come here," he said. "I want to show you something."
+
+They went close together, John gripping her arm, in the old way, to steer
+her. As they came to the long wall of the shed his eyes slewed round and
+looked at her out of their corners. She had seen that sidelong, attentive
+look once before, when she was a little girl, in the eyes of a schoolboy
+who had taken her away and told her something horrid. The door of the
+shed stood ajar. John half led, half pushed her in.
+
+"Look there--" he said.
+
+The dead men were laid out in a row, on their backs; greyish-white,
+sallow-white faces upturned; bodies straight and stiff on a thin litter
+of straw. Pale grey light hovered, filtered through dust.
+
+It came from some clearer place of glass beyond that might have been a
+carpenter's shop, partitioned off. She couldn't see what was going on
+there. She didn't see anything but the dead bodies, the dead faces, and
+John's living face.
+
+He leaned against the wall; his head was thrown back, his eyes moved
+glistening under the calm lids; the corners of his mouth and the wings of
+his nostrils were lifted as he laughed: a soft, thin laugh breathed out
+between the edges of his teeth. He pointed.
+
+"There's your man. Shows how much they wanted him, doesn't it?"
+
+He lay there, the last comer, in his uniform and bloody bandages, his
+stiff, peaked mouth open, his legs stretched apart as they had sprung in
+his last agony.
+
+"Oh, John--"
+
+She cried out in her fright and put her hands over her eyes. She had
+always been afraid of the dead bodies. She didn't want to know where they
+put them, and nobody told her.
+
+John gripped her wrists so that he hurt her and dragged down her hands.
+He looked into her eyes, still laughing.
+
+"I thought you weren't afraid of anything," he said.
+
+"I'm not afraid when we're out there. I'm only afraid of _seeing_ them.
+You know I am."
+
+She turned, but he had put himself between her and the door. She wrenched
+at the latch, sobbing.
+
+"How could you be so _cruel?_ What did you do it for? What did you
+_do_ it for?"
+
+"I wanted you to see what they've done with him. There's his clean bed.
+They haven't even taken his boots off."
+
+"You brute. You _utter_ brute!"
+
+A steely sound like a dropped hammer came from behind the glass
+partition; then the sliding of a latch. John opened the door a little way
+and she slipped out past him.
+
+"_Next time_," he said, "perhaps you'll do as you're told."
+
+She wanted to get away by herself. Not into her own room, where Gwinnie,
+who had been unloading ambulance trains half the night, now rested. The
+McClane Corps was crowding into the messroom for tea. She passed through
+without looking at any of them and out to the balcony, closing the French
+window behind her. She could hide there beyond the window where the wall
+was blank.
+
+She leaned back, flattening herself against the wall....
+
+Something would have to be done. They couldn't go on like this.... Her
+mind went to and fro, quickly, with short jerky movements, distressed; it
+had to do so much thinking in so short a time.
+
+She would always have to reckon with John's fear. And John's fear was not
+what she had thought it, a sad, helpless, fatal thing, sad because it
+knew itself doom-like and helpless. It was cruel, with a sort of mental
+violence in it, worse than the cruel animal fear of the men in the
+plantation. She could see that his cowardice had something to do with his
+cruelty and that his cruelty was somehow linked up with his cowardice;
+but she couldn't for the life of her imagine the secret of the bond. She
+only felt that it would be something secret and horrible; something that
+she would rather not know about.
+
+And she knew that since yesterday he had left off caring for her. His
+love had died a sudden, cruel and violent death. His cowardice had done
+that too.... And he had left off caring for the wounded. It was almost as
+if he hated them, because they lay so still, keeping him back, keeping
+him out under the fire.
+
+Queer, but all those other cowardly things that he had done had seemed to
+her unreal even when she had seen him doing them; and afterwards when she
+thought about them they were unreal, as if they hadn't happened, as if
+she had just imagined them. Incredible, and yet the sort of thing you
+_could_ imagine if you tried. But that last devilish thing he did, it had
+a hard, absolute reality. Just because it was inconceivable, because you
+couldn't have imagined it, you couldn't doubt that it had happened.
+
+It was happening now. As long as she lived it would go on happening in
+her mind. She would never get away from it.
+
+There were things that men did, bestial things, cruel things, things they
+did to women. But not things like this. They _didn't_ think of them,
+because this thing wasn't thinkable.
+
+Why had John done it? Why? She supposed he wanted to hurt her and
+frighten her because he had been hurt, because he had been frightened.
+And because he knew she loved her wounded men. Perhaps he wanted to make
+her hate him and have done with it.
+
+Well, she did hate him. Oh, yes, she hated him.
+
+She heard the window open and shut and a woman's footsteps swishing on
+the stone floor. Trixie Rankin came to her, with her quick look that fell
+on you like a bird swooping. She stood facing her, upright and stiff in
+her sharp beauty; her lips were pressed together as though they had just
+closed on some biting utterance; but her eyes were soft and intent.
+
+"What's he done this time?" she said.
+
+"He hasn't done anything."
+
+"Oh yes, he has. He's done something perfectly beastly."
+
+It was no use lying to Trixie. She knew what he was like, even if she
+didn't know about yesterday, even if she didn't know what he had done
+now. Nobody could know that. She looked straight at Trixie, with broad,
+open eyes that defied her to know.
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Your face."
+
+"Damn my face. It's got nothing to do with you, Trixie."
+
+"Yes it has. If it gives the show away I can't help seeing, can I?"
+
+"You can help talking."
+
+"Yes, I can help talking."
+
+The arrogance had gone out of her face. It could change in a minute from
+the face of a bird of prey to the face of a watching angel. It looked at
+her as it looked at wounded men: tender and protective. But Trixie
+couldn't see that you didn't want any tenderness and protection just
+then, or any recognition of your wound.
+
+"You rum little blighter," she said. "Come along. Nobody's going to
+talk."
+
+There was a stir as Charlotte went in; people shifting their places to
+make room for her; McClane calling out to her to come and sit by him;
+Alice Bartrum making sweet eyes; the men getting up and cutting bread and
+butter and reaching for her cup to give it her. She could see they were
+all determined to be nice, to show her what they thought of her; they had
+sent Trixie to bring her in. There was something a little deliberate
+about it and exaggerated. They were getting it up--a demonstration in her
+favour, a demonstration against John Conway.
+
+She talked; but her thoughts ran by themselves on a line separate from
+her speech.
+
+"We got in six wounded." ... "That curé was there again. He was
+splendid." ... They didn't know anything. They condemned him on the
+evidence of her face, the face she had brought back to them, coming
+straight from John. Her face had the mark of what he had done to
+her.... "Much firing? Not so very much." ... She remembered what he had
+said to her about her face. "Something's happened to it. Some cruelty.
+Some damnable cruelty...."
+
+"We'll have to go out there again."
+
+They were all listening, and Alice Bartrum had made fresh tea for her;
+McClane was setting down her cup. She was thirsty; she longed for the
+fresh, fragrant tea; she was soothed by the kind, listening faces.
+Suddenly they drew away; they weren't listening any more. John had come
+into the room.
+
+It flashed on her that all these people thought that John was her lover,
+her lover in the way they understood love. They were looking at him as if
+they hated him. But John's face was quiet and composed and somehow
+triumphant; it held itself up against all the hostile faces; it fronted
+McClane and his men as their equal; it was the face of a man who has
+satisfied a lust. His whole body had a look of assurance and
+accomplishment, as if his cruelty had given him power.
+
+And with it all he kept his dreadful beauty. It hurt her to look at him.
+
+She rose, leaving her tea untasted, and went out of the room. She
+couldn't sit there with him. She had given him up. Her horror of him was
+pure, absolute. It would never return on itself to know pity or remorse.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+And the next day, as if nothing had happened, he was excited and eager to
+set out. He could sleep off his funk in the night, like drink, and get up
+in the morning as if it had never been. He was more immune from memory
+than any drunkard. He woke to his romance as a child wakes to the renewed
+wonder of the world. It was so real to him that, however hardly you
+judged him, you couldn't think of him as a humbug or a hypocrite.... No.
+He was not that. He was not that. His mind truly lived in a glorious
+state for which none of his disgraceful deeds were ever done. It created
+a sort of innocence for him. She could forgive him (even after
+yesterday), she could almost believe in him again when she saw him coming
+down the hall to the ambulance with his head raised and his eyes shining,
+gallant and keen.
+
+They were to go to Berlaere. Trixie Rankin had gone on before them with
+Gurney, McClane's best chauffeur. McClane and Sutton were at Melle.
+
+They had not been to Berlaere since that day, the first time they had
+gone out together. That time at least had been perfect; it remained
+secure; nothing could ever spoil it; she could remember the delight of
+it, their strange communion of ecstasy, without doubt, without misgiving.
+You could never forget. It might have been better if you could, instead
+of knowing that it would exist in you forever, to torment you by its
+unlikeness to the days, the awful, incredible days that had come
+afterwards. There was no way of thinking that John had been more real
+that day than he had been yesterday. She was simply left with the
+inscrutable mystery of him on her hands. But she could see clearly that
+he was more real to himself. Yesterday and the day before had ceased to
+exist for him. He was back in his old self.
+
+There was only one sign of memory that he gave. He was no longer her
+lover; he no longer recognised her even as his comrade. He was her
+commandant. It was his place to command, and hers to be commanded. He
+looked at her, when he looked at her at all, with a stern coldness. She
+was a woman who had committed some grave fault, whom he no longer
+trusted. So masterly was his playing of this part, so great, in a way,
+was still his power over her, that there were moments when she almost
+believed in the illusion he created. She had committed some grave fault.
+She was not worthy of his trust. Somewhere, at some time forgotten, in
+some obscure and secret way, she had betrayed him.
+
+She had so mixed her hidden self with his in love that even now, with all
+her knowledge of him, she couldn't help feeling the thing as he felt it
+and seeing as he saw. Her mind kept on passing in and out of the illusion
+with little shocks of astonishment.
+
+And yet all the time she was acutely aware of the difference. When she
+went out with him she felt that she was going with something dangerous
+and uncertain. She knew what fear was now. She was afraid all the time of
+what he would do next, of what he would not do. Her wounded were not safe
+with him. Nothing was safe.
+
+She wished that she could have gone out with Billy; with Billy there
+wouldn't be any excitement, but neither would there be this abominable
+fear. On the other hand you couldn't let anybody else take the risk of
+John; and you couldn't, you simply couldn't let him go alone. Conceive
+him going alone--the things that might happen; she could at least see
+that some things didn't.
+
+It was odd, but John had never shown the smallest desire to go without
+her. If he hadn't liked it he could easily have taken Sutton or Gwinnie
+or one of the McClane men. It was as if, in spite of his hostility, he
+still felt, as he had said, that where she was everything would be right.
+
+And it looked as if this time nothing could go wrong. When they came into
+the village the firing had stopped; it was concentrating further east
+towards Zele. Trixie's ambulance was packed, and Trixie was excited and
+triumphant.
+
+Her gestures waved them back as useless, much too late; without them she
+had got in all the wounded. But in the end they took over two of them,
+slight cases that Trixie resigned without a pang. She had had to turn
+them out to make room for poor Gurney, the chauffeur, who had hurt
+himself, ruptured something, slipping on a muddy bank with his stretcher.
+
+Mr. Conway, she said, could drive her back to Ghent and Charlotte could
+follow with the two men. She had settled it all, in her bright,
+domineering way, in a second, and now swung herself up on the back step
+of her car.
+
+They had got round the turn of the village and Charlotte was starting to
+follow them when she heard them draw up. In another minute John appeared,
+walking back slowly down the street with a young Belgian lieutenant. They
+were talking earnestly together. So soon as Charlotte saw the lieutenant
+she had a sense of something happening, something fatal, that would
+change Trixie's safe, easy programme. John as he came on looked perturbed
+and thoughtful. They stopped. The lieutenant was saying something final.
+John nodded assent and saluted. The lieutenant sketched a salute and
+hurried away in the opposite direction.
+
+John waited till he was well out of sight before he came to her. (She
+noticed that.) He had the look at first of being up to something, as if
+the devil of yesterday was with him still.
+
+It passed. His voice had no devil in it. "I say, I've got a job for you,
+Charlotte. Something you'll like."
+
+There was no devil in his voice, but he stared away from her as he spoke.
+
+"I don't want you to go to Ghent. I want you to go on to Zele."
+
+"Zele? Do I know the way?"
+
+"It's quite easy. You turn round and go the way we went that first
+day--you remember? It's the shortest cut from here."
+
+"Pretty bad going though. Hadn't we better go on and strike the
+main road?"
+
+"Yes, if you want to go miles round and get held up by the transport."
+
+"All right--if we can get through."
+
+"You'll get through all right." His voice had the tone of finality.
+
+"I'm to go by myself then?"
+
+"Well--if I've got to drive Mrs. Rankin--"
+
+She thought: It's going to be dangerous.
+
+"By the way, I haven't told her I'm sending you. You don't want her
+butting in and going with you."
+
+"No. I certainly don't want Trixie.... And look here, I don't
+particularly want those men. Much better leave them here where they're
+safe and send in again for them."
+
+"I don't know that I _can_ send in again. We're supposed to have finished
+this job. The cars may be wanted for anything. _They'll_ be all right."
+
+"I don't _like_ taking them."
+
+"You're making difficulties," he said. He was irritable and hurried; he
+had kept on turning and looking up the street as though he thought the
+lieutenant might appear again at any minute.
+
+"When _will_ you learn that you've simply got to obey orders?"
+
+"All right."
+
+She hadn't a chance with him. Whatever she said and did he could always
+bring it round to that, her orders. She thought she knew what _his_
+orders had been.
+
+He cranked up the engine. She could see him stooping and rising to it, a
+rhythmic, elastic movement; he was cranking energetically, with a sort of
+furious, flushed enjoyment of his power.
+
+She backed and turned and he ran forward with her as she started. He
+shouted "Don't think about the main road. Get through.... And hurry _up_.
+You haven't got too much time."
+
+She knew. It was going to be dangerous and he funked it. He hadn't got to
+drive Trixie into Ghent. When the worst came to the worst Trixie could
+drive herself. She thought: He didn't tell her because he daren't. He
+knew she wouldn't let him send me by myself. She'd _make_ him go. She'd
+stand over him and bully him till he had to.
+
+Still, she could do it. She could get through. Going by herself was
+better than going with a man who funked it. Only she would have liked it
+better without the two wounded men. She thought of them, jostled, falling
+against each other, falling forward and recovering, shaken by the jolting
+of the car, and perhaps brought back into danger. She suspected that not
+having too much time might be the essence of the risk.
+
+Everything was quiet as they ran along the open road from the village to
+the hamlet that sat low and humble on the edge of the fields. A few
+houses and the long wall of the barn still stood; but by this time the
+house she had brought the guns from had the whole of its roof knocked in,
+and the stripped gable at the end of the row no longer pricked up its
+point against the sky; the front of the hollow shell had fallen forward
+and flung itself across the road.
+
+For a moment she thought the way was blocked. She thought: If I can't get
+round I must get over. She backed, charged, and the car, rocking a
+little, struggled through. And there, where the road swerved slightly,
+the high wall of a barn, undermined, bulged forward, toppling. It
+answered the vibration of the car with a visible tremor. So soon as she
+passed it fell with a great crash and rumbling and sprawled in a smoky
+heap that blocked her way behind her.
+
+After that they went through quiet country for a time, but further east,
+near the town, the shelling began. The road here was opened up into great
+holes with ragged, hollow edges; she had to skirt them carefully, and
+sometimes there would not be enough clear ground to move in, and one
+wheel of the car would go unsupported, hanging over space.
+
+Yet she had got through.
+
+As she came into Zele she met the last straggling line of the refugees.
+They cried out to her not to go on. She thought: I must get those men
+before the retreat begins.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Returning with her heavy load of wounded, on the pitch-black road,
+half way to Ghent she was halted. She had come up with the tail end of
+the retreat.
+
+       *       * * * *
+
+Trixie Rankin stood on the hospital steps looking out. The car turned in
+and swung up the rubber incline, but instead of stopping before the porch
+it ran on towards the downward slope. Charlotte jammed on the brakes with
+a hard jerk and backed to the level.
+
+She couldn't think how she had let the car do that. She couldn't think
+why she was slipping from the edge of it into Trixie's arms. And
+stumbling in that ignominious way on the steps with Trixie holding her up
+on one side.... It didn't last. After she had drunk the hot black coffee
+that Alice Bartrum gave her she was all right.
+
+The men had gone out of the messroom, leaving them alone.
+
+"I'm all right, Trixie, only a bit tired."
+
+"Tired? I should think you _were_ tired. That Conway man's a perfect
+devil. Fancy scooting back himself on a safe trip and sending you out to
+Zele. _Zele_!"
+
+"McClane doesn't care much where he sends _you_."
+
+"Oh, Mac--As if he could stop us. But he'd draw the line at Zele, with
+the Germans coming into it."
+
+"Rot. They weren't coming in for hours and hours."
+
+"Well, anyhow he thought they were."
+
+"He didn't think anything about it. I wanted to go and I went. He--he
+couldn't stop me."
+
+"It's no good lying to me, Charlotte. I know too much. I know he had
+orders to go to Zele himself and the damned coward funked it. I've a good
+mind to report him to Head Quarters."
+
+"No. You won't do that. You wouldn't be such a putrid beast."
+
+"If I don't, Charlotte, it's because I like you. You're the pluckiest
+little blighter in the world. But I'll tell you what I _shall_ do. Next
+time your Mr. Conway's ordered on a job he doesn't fancy I'll go with him
+and hold his nose down to it by the scruff of his neck. If he was _my_
+man I'd bloody well tell him what I thought of him."
+
+"It doesn't matter what you think of him. You were pretty well gone on
+him yourself once."
+
+"When? When?"
+
+"When you wanted to turn Mac out and make him commandant."
+
+"Oh, _then_--I was a jolly fool to be taken in by him. So were you."
+
+She stopped on her way to the door. "I admit he _looks_ everything he
+isn't. But that only shows what a beastly humbug the man is."
+
+"No. He isn't a humbug. He really likes going out even if he can't stand
+it when he gets there."
+
+"I've no use for that sort of courage."
+
+"It isn't courage. But it isn't humbug."
+
+"I've no use for your fine distinctions either."
+
+She heard Alice Bartrum's voice calling to Trixie as she went out, "It's
+jolly decent of her not to go back on him."
+
+The voice went on. "You needn't mind what Trixie says about cold
+feet. She's said it about everybody. About Sutton and Mac, and all
+our men, and me."
+
+She thought: What's the good of lying when they all know? Still, there
+were things they wouldn't know if she kept on lying, things they would
+never guess.
+
+"Trixie doesn't know anything about him," she said. "No more do you. You
+don't know what he _was_."
+
+"Whatever he _is_, whatever he's done, Charlotte, you mustn't let it hurt
+you. It hasn't anything to do with you. We all know what _you_ are."
+
+"Me? I'm not bothering about myself. I tell you it's not what _you_ think
+about him, it's what _I_ think."
+
+"Yes," said Alice Bartrum. Then Gwinnie Denning and John Conway came in
+and she left them.
+
+John carried himself very straight, and again Charlotte saw about him
+that odd look of accomplishment and satisfaction.
+
+"So you got through?" he said.
+
+"Yes. I got through." They kept their eyes from each other as they spoke.
+
+Gwinnie struck in, "Are you all right?"
+
+"Yes, rather.... The little Belgian Army doctor was there. He was
+adorable, sticking on, working away with his wounded, in a sort of
+heavenly peace, with the Germans just outside."
+
+"How many did you get?"
+
+"Eleven--Thirteen."
+
+"Oh good.... I've the rottenest luck. I'd have given my head to have gone
+with you."
+
+"I'm glad you didn't. It wasn't what you'd call a lady's tea-party."
+
+"Who wants a lady's tea-party? I ought to have gone in with the Mac
+Corps. Then I'd have had a chance."
+
+"Not this time. Mac draws the line somewhere.... Look here, Gwinnie, I
+wish you'd clear out a minute and let me talk to John."
+
+Gwinnie went, grumbling.
+
+For a moment silence came down between them. John was drinking coffee
+with an air of being alone in the room, pretending that he hadn't heard
+and didn't see her.
+
+"John--I didn't mind driving that car. I knew I could do it and I did it.
+I won't say I didn't mind the shelling, because I did. Still, shelling's
+all in the day's work. And I didn't mind your sending me, because I'd
+rather have gone myself than let you go. I don't want you to be killed.
+Somehow that's still the one thing I couldn't bear. But if you'd sent
+Gwinnie I'd have killed you."
+
+"I didn't send Gwinnie. I gave you your chance. I knew you wanted to cut
+Mrs. Rankin out."
+
+"I? I never thought of such a rotten thing."
+
+"Well, you talked about danger as if you liked it."
+
+"So did you."
+
+"Oh--_go_ to hell."
+
+"I've just come from there."
+
+"Oh--so you were frightened, were you?"
+
+"Yes, I was horribly frightened. I had thirteen wounded men with me. What
+do you suppose it feels like, driving a heavy ambulance car by yourself?
+You can't sit in front and steer and look after thirteen wounded men at
+the same time. I had to keep hopping in and out. That isn't nice when
+there's shells about. I shall never forgive you for not coming to give a
+hand with those men. There's funk you can forgive and--"
+
+She thought: "It's John--John--I'm saying these disgusting things to.
+I'm as bad as Trixie, telling him what I bloody well think of him, going
+back on him."
+
+"And there's funk--"
+
+"You'd better take care, Charlotte. Do you know I could get you fired out
+of Belgium to-morrow?"
+
+"Not after to-night, I think." (It was horrible.)
+
+He got up and opened the door. "Anyhow, you'll clear out of this room
+now, damn you."
+
+"I wish you'd heard that Army doctor damning _you_."
+
+"Why didn't he go back with you himself, then?"
+
+"_He_ couldn't leave his wounded."
+
+He slammed the door hard behind her.
+
+That was just like him. Wounded men everywhere, trying to sleep, and he
+slammed doors. He didn't care.
+
+She would have to go on lying. She had made up her mind to that. So long
+as it would keep the others from knowing, so long as John's awfulness
+went beyond their knowledge, so long as it would do any good to John, she
+would lie.
+
+Her time had come. She remembered saying that. She could hear herself
+talking to John at Barrow Hill Farm: "Everybody's got their breaking
+point.... I daresay when my time comes I shall funk and lie."
+
+Well, didn't she? Funk--the everlasting funk of wondering what John would
+do next; and lying, lying at every turn to save him. _He_ was her
+breaking point.
+
+She had lied, the first time they went out, about the firing. She
+wondered whether she had done it because then, even then, she had been
+afraid of his fear. Hadn't she always somehow, in secret, been afraid?
+She could see the car coming round the corner by the Church in the narrow
+street at Stow, she could feel it grazing her thigh, and John letting her
+go, jumping safe to the curb. She had pretended that it hadn't happened.
+
+But that first day--No. He had been brave then. She had only lied because
+she was afraid he would worry about her.... Brave then. Could war tire
+you and wear you down, and change you from yourself? In two weeks? Change
+him so that she had to hate him!
+
+Half the night she lay awake wondering: Do I hate him because he doesn't
+care about me? Or because he doesn't care about the wounded? She could
+see all their faces: the face of the wounded man at Melle (_he_ had
+crawled out on his hands and knees to look for her); the face of the dead
+boy who hadn't died when John left him; the Flamand they brought from
+Lokeren, lying in the road; the face of the dead man in the shed--And
+John's face.
+
+How could you care for a thing like that? How could you want a thing like
+that to care for you?
+
+And she? She didn't matter. Nothing mattered in all the world but Them.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+It was Saturday, the tenth of October, the day after the fall of Antwerp.
+The Germans were pressing closer round Ghent; they might march in any
+day. She had been in Belgium a hundred years; she had lived a hundred
+years under this doom.
+
+But at last she was free of John. Utterly free. His mind would have no
+power over her any more. Nor yet his body. She was glad that he had not
+been her lover. Supposing her body had been bound to him so that it
+couldn't get away? The struggle had been hard enough when her first flash
+came to her; and when she had fought against her knowledge and denied it,
+unable to face the truth that did violence to her passion; and when she
+had given him up and was left with just that, the beauty of his body, and
+it had hurt her to look at him.
+
+Oh well, nothing could hurt her now. And anyhow she would get through
+to-day without being afraid of what might happen. John couldn't do
+anything awful; he had been ordered on an absolutely safe expedition,
+taking medical stores to the convent hospital at Bruges and convoying
+Gurney, the sick chauffeur, to Ostend for England. Charlotte was to go
+out with Sutton, and Gwinnie was to take poor Gurney's place. She was
+glad she was going with Billy. Whatever happened Billy would go through
+it without caring, his mind fixed on the solid work.
+
+And John, for an hour before he started, had been going about in gloom,
+talking of death. _His_ death.
+
+They were looking over the last letter from his father which he had asked
+her to answer for him. It seemed that John had told him the chances were
+he would be killed and had asked him whether in this case he would allow
+the Roden ambulances to be handed over to McClane. And the old man had
+given his consent.
+
+"Isn't it a pity to frighten him?" she said.
+
+"He's no business to be frightened. It's _my_ death. If I can face it, he
+can. I'm simply making necessary arrangements."
+
+She could see that. At the same time it struck her that he wanted you to
+see that he exposed himself to all the risks of death, to see how he
+faced it. She had no patience with that talk about death; that pitiful
+bolstering up of his romance.
+
+"If McClane says much more you can tell him."
+
+He was counting on this transfer of the ambulances to get credit with
+McClane; to silence him.
+
+There were other letters which he had told her to answer. As soon as he
+had started she went into his room to look for them. If they were not on
+the chimneypiece they would be in the drawer with his razors and
+pockethandkerchiefs.
+
+It was John's room, after she had gone through it, that showed her what
+he was doing.
+
+Sutton looked in before she had finished. She called to him, "Billy, you
+might come here a minute."
+
+He came in, eyebrows lifted at the inquisition.
+
+"What's up?"
+
+"I'm afraid John isn't coming back."
+
+"Not coming back? Of course he's coming back."
+
+"No. I think he's--got off."
+
+"You mean he's--"
+
+"Yes. Bolted."
+
+"What on earth makes you think that?"
+
+"He's taken all sorts of things--pyjamas, razors, all his
+pockethandkerchiefs... I _had_ to look through his drawers to find those
+letters he told me to answer."
+
+Sutton had gone through into the slip of white tiled lavatory beyond. She
+followed him.
+
+"My God," he said, "yes. He's taken his toothbrush and his sleeping
+draught.... You know he tried to get leave yesterday and they wouldn't
+give it him?"
+
+"No. That makes it simply awful."
+
+"Pretty awful."
+
+"Billy--we must get him back."
+
+"I--I don't know about that. He isn't much good, is he? I think we'd
+better let him go."
+
+"Don't you see how awful it'll be for the Corps?"
+
+"The Corps? Does that matter? McClane would take us all on to-morrow."
+
+"I mean for _us_. You and me and Gwinnie. He's our Corps, and we're it."
+
+"Sharlie--with the Germans coming into Ghent do you honestly believe
+anybody'll remember what he did or didn't do?"
+
+"Yes. We're going to stick on with the Belgian Army. It'll be remembered
+against _us_. Besides, it'll kill his father."
+
+"He'll do that any way. He's rotten through and through."
+
+"No. He was splendid in the beginning. He might be splendid some day
+again. But if we let him go off and do this he's done for."
+
+"He's done for anyhow. Isn't it better to recognize that he's rotten?
+McClane wouldn't have him. He saw what he was."
+
+"He didn't see him at Berlaere. He _was_ splendid there."
+
+"My dear child, don't you know why? He didn't see there was any danger.
+He was too stupid to see it."
+
+"I saw it."
+
+"You're not stupid."
+
+"He did see it at the end."
+
+"At the end, yes--When he let you go back for the guns."
+
+She remembered. She remembered his face, the little beads of sweat
+glittering. He couldn't help that.
+
+"Look here, from the time he realised the danger, did he go out or did he
+stay under cover?"
+
+She didn't answer.
+
+"There," he said, "you see."
+
+"Oh, Billy, won't you leave him one shred?"
+
+"No. Not one shred."
+
+Yet, even now, if he could only be splendid--If he could only be it! Why
+shouldn't Billy leave him one shred? After all, he didn't know all the
+awful things John had done; and she would never tell him.... He did know
+two things, the two things she didn't know. She had got to know them. The
+desire that urged her to the completion of her knowledge pursued her now.
+She would possess him in her mind if in no other way.
+
+"Billy--do you remember that day at Melle, when John lost me? Did you
+tell him I was going back with you?"
+
+"No. I didn't."
+
+Then he _had_ left her. And he had lied to both of them.
+
+"Was the boy dead or alive when he left him?"
+
+"He was alive all right. We could have saved him."
+
+He had died--he had died of fright, then.
+
+"You _said_ he was dead."
+
+"I know I did. I lied."
+
+"... And before that--when he was with you and Trixie on that
+battlefield--Did he--"
+
+"Yes. Then, too ... You see there aren't any shreds. The only thing you
+can say is he can't help it. Nobody'd have been hard on him if he hadn't
+gassed so much about danger."
+
+"That's the part you can't understand.... But, Billy, why did you lie
+about him?"
+
+"Because I didn't want you to know, then. I knew it would hurt you, I
+knew it would hurt you more than anything else."
+
+"That was rather wonderful of you."
+
+"Wasn't wonderful at all. I knew because what _you_ think, what _you_
+feel, matters more to me than anything else. Except perhaps my job. I
+have to keep that separate."
+
+Her mind slid over that, not caring, returning to the object of
+its interest.
+
+"Look here, Billy, you may be right. It probably doesn't matter to us.
+But it'll be perfectly awful for him."
+
+"They can't do anything to him, Sharlie."
+
+"It's what he'll do to himself."
+
+"Suicide? Not he."
+
+"I don't mean that. Can't you see that when he gets away to England,
+safe, and the funk settles down he'll start romancing all over again.
+He'll see the whole war again like that; and then he'll remember what
+he's done. He'll have to live all his life remembering...."
+
+"He won't. _You'll_ remember--_You'll_ suffer. You're feeling the shame
+he ought to feel and doesn't."
+
+"Well, somebody's got to feel it.... And he'll feel it too. He won't be
+let off. As long as he lives he'll remember.... I don't want him to have
+that suffering."
+
+"He's brought it on himself, Sharlie."
+
+"I don't care. I don't want him to have it. I couldn't bear it if he
+got away."
+
+"Of course, if you're going to be unhappy about it--"
+
+"The only thing is, can we go after him? Can we spare a car?"
+
+"Well yes, I can manage that all right. The fact is, the Germans may
+really be in to-morrow or Monday, and we're thinking of evacuating all
+the British wounded to-day. There are some men here that we ought to take
+to Ostend. I've been talking to the President about it."
+
+And in the end they went with their wounded, less than an hour after John
+had started.
+
+"I don't say I'll bring him back," said Sutton. "But at any rate we can
+find out what he's up to." He meditated.... "We mayn't have to bring him.
+I shouldn't wonder if he came back on his own. He's like that. He can't
+stand danger yet he keeps on coming back to it. Can't leave it alone."
+
+"I know. He isn't quite an ordinary coward."
+
+"I'm not sure. I've known chaps like that. Can't keep away from
+the thing."
+
+But she stuck to it. John's cowardice was not like other people's
+cowardice. Other cowards going into danger had the imagination of horror.
+He had nothing but the imagination of romantic delight. It was the
+reality that became too much for him. He was either too stupid, or too
+securely wrapped up in his dream to reckon with reality. It surprised him
+every time. And he had no imaginative fear of fear. His fear must have
+surprised him.
+
+"He'll have got away from Bruges," she said.
+
+"I don't think so. He'll have to put up at the Convent for a bit, to let
+Gurney rest."
+
+They had missed the Convent and were running down a narrow street towards
+the Market Place when they found John. He came on across a white bridge
+over a canal at the bottom. He was escorted by some Belgian women,
+dressed in black; they were talking and pointing up the street.
+
+He said he had been to lunch in the town and had lost himself there and
+they were showing him the way back to the Convent.
+
+She had seen all that before somewhere, John coming over the Canal bridge
+with the women in black.... She remembered. That was in one of her three
+dreams. Only what she saw now was incomplete. There had been something
+more in the dream. Something had happened.
+
+It happened half an hour later when she went out to find John in the
+Convent garden where he was walking with the nuns. The garden shimmered
+in a silver mist from the canal, the broad grass plots, the clipped
+hedges, the cones and spikes of yew, the tall, feathery chrysanthemums,
+the trailing bowers and arches, were netted and laced and webbed with the
+silver mist. Down at the bottom of the path the forms of John and the
+three women showed blurred and insubstantial and still.
+
+Presently they emerged, solid and clear; the nuns in their black habits
+and the raking white caps like wings that set them sailing along. They
+were showing John their garden, taking a shy, gentle, absorbed
+possession of him.
+
+And as she came towards him John passed her without speaking. But his
+face had turned to her with the look she had seen before. Eyes of hatred,
+eyes that repudiated and betrayed her.
+
+The nuns had stopped, courteously, to greet her; she fell behind with one
+of them; the two others had overtaken John who had walked on, keeping up
+his stiff, repudiating air.
+
+The air, the turn of the head, the look that she had dreamed. Only in the
+dream it had hurt her, and now she was hard and had no pain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in the Convent garden that they played it out, in one final,
+astounding conversation.
+
+The nuns had brought two chairs out on to the flagged terrace and set a
+small table there covered with a white cloth. Thus invited, John had no
+choice but to take his place beside her. Still he retained his mood.
+
+(The nuns had left them. Sutton was in one of the wards, helping with an
+operation.)
+
+"I thought," he said, "that I was going to have peace...."
+
+It seemed to her that they had peace. They had been so much at the mercy
+of chance moments that this secure hour given to them in the closed
+garden seemed, in its quietness, immense.
+
+"... But first it's Sutton, then it's you."
+
+"We needn't say anything unless you like. There isn't much to be said."
+
+"Oh, isn't there!"
+
+"Not," she said, "if you're coming back."
+
+"Of course I'm coming back.... Look here, Charlotte. You didn't suppose I
+was really going to bolt, did you?"
+
+"Were you going to change into your pyjamas at Ostend?"
+
+"My pyjamas? I brought them for Gurney."
+
+"And your sleeping draught was for Gurney?"
+
+"Of course it was."
+
+"And your razors and your toothbrush, too. Oh, John, what's the good of
+lying? You forgot that I helped Alice Bartrum to pack Gurney's things.
+You forget that Billy knows."
+
+"Do I? I shan't forget your going back on me; your betraying me," he
+said.
+
+And for the first time she realised how alone he was; how horribly alone.
+He had nobody but her.
+
+"Who have I betrayed you to?"
+
+"To Sutton. To McClane. To everybody you talked to."
+
+"No. No."
+
+"Yes. And you betrayed me in your thoughts. That's worse. People don't
+always mean what they say. It's what they think."
+
+"What was I to think?"
+
+"Why, that all the damnable things you said about me weren't true."
+
+"I didn't say anything."
+
+"You've betrayed me by the things you didn't say."
+
+"Why should I have betrayed you?"
+
+"You know why. When a woman betrays a man it's always for one reason."
+
+He threw his head back to strike at her with his eyes, hard and keen,
+dark blue like the blade of a new knife ... "Because he hasn't given her
+what she wants."
+
+"Oh, what I want--I thought we'd settled that long ago."
+
+"You've never settled it. It isn't in you to settle it."
+
+"I can't talk to you about that. You're too horrible. But I didn't
+betray you."
+
+"You listened to people who betrayed me. If you cared for me in any
+decent way you'd have stood by me."
+
+"I _have_ stood by you through thick and thin. I've lied your lies. There
+isn't one of your lies I haven't backed. I've done everything I could
+think of to keep people from knowing about you."
+
+"Yet you go and tell Sutton that I've bolted. That I'm a deserter."
+
+"Yes, when it was all over. If you'd got away everybody'd have known. As
+it is, only Billy and I know; and he's safe."
+
+"You insist that I was trying to get away? I own I thought of it. But one
+doesn't do everything one thinks of.... No.... Don't imagine I was sick
+of the war, or sick of Belgium. It's you I'm sick of."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you. You had your warning. I told you what would happen if you let
+me see you wanted me."
+
+"You think you've seen that?"
+
+"I've seen nothing else."
+
+"Once, perhaps. Twice. Once when you came to me on Barrow Hill. And when
+we were crossing; once. And each time you never saw it."
+
+"Anybody can see. It's in your face. In your eyes and mouth. You can't
+hide your lust."
+
+"My--'lust.' Don't you know I only cared for you because I'd done
+with that?"
+
+They stopped. The nuns were back again, bringing great cups of hot black
+coffee, coming quietly, and going quietly away. It was wonderful, all
+that beauty and gentleness and peace existing in the horror of the war,
+and through this horror within horror that John had made.
+
+They drank their coffee, slowly, greedily, prolonging this distraction
+from their torment. Charlotte finished first.
+
+"You say I want you. I own I did once. But I don't now. Why, I care
+more for the scrubbiest little Belgian with a smashed finger than I
+do for you."
+
+"I suppose you can satisfy your erotic susceptibilities that way."
+
+"I haven't any, I tell you. I only cared for you because I thought you
+were clean. I thought your mind was beautiful. And you aren't clean. And
+your mind's the ugliest thing I know. And the cruelest.... Let's get it
+right, John. I can forgive your funking. If your nerves are jumpy they're
+jumpy. I daresay _I_ shall be jumpy if the Germans come into Ghent before
+I'm out of it. I can forgive everything you've done to _me_. I can
+forgive your lying. I see there's nothing left for you but to lie.... But
+I can't forgive your not caring for the wounded. That's cruel.... You
+didn't care for that boy at Melle--"
+
+John's mouth opened as if he were going to say something. He
+seemed to gasp.
+
+"--No, you didn't or you wouldn't have left him. Whatever your funk was
+like, you couldn't have left him if you'd cared, any more than I could
+have left _you_."
+
+"He was dead when I left him."
+
+"He was still warm when I found him. Billy thought you were bringing him
+away. He says he wasn't dead."
+
+"He lies, then. But you'll take his word against mine."
+
+"Yes," she said simply. "And he says he _didn't_ tell you I was going
+on with him. You don't care for _me_. If you'd cared you couldn't
+have left me."
+
+"I thought you said if it was a toss up between you and a wounded man--?
+There were wounded men in that car."
+
+"There was a wounded man with me. You left _him_.... Don't imagine I
+cared about myself, whether I lived or died. It was because I cared about
+you. I cared so awfully."
+
+He jerked out a laugh. One light, short sound of dismissal and contempt.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+That light sound he made had ended it.
+
+She remembered it afterwards, not as a thing that hurt her, but as an
+unpleasant incident of the day, like the rudeness of a stranger, and yet
+not to be forgotten. It had the importance of extreme finality; his
+answer to everything, unanswerable.
+
+She didn't care. She had ended it herself and with so clean a cut that
+she could afford to let him have that inarticulate last word. She had
+left him nothing to do but keep up his pretence that there had never been
+so much as a beginning. He gave no sign of anything having been between
+them, unless his attitude to Sutton was a sign.
+
+It showed the next day, the terrible Sunday that was ending everything.
+Yesterday he had given orders that Charlotte should drive Sutton while he
+drove by himself. To-day he had changed all that. Gwinnie was to drive
+Sutton and Charlotte was to go out alone. And he had offered himself to
+McClane. To McClane. That gave her the measure of his resentment. She
+could see that he coupled her with Sutton while he yet tried to keep them
+apart. He was not going to have more to do with either of them than he
+could help.
+
+So that she had hardly seen or heard of him that day. And when the solid
+work began she found that she could turn him out of her mind as if he had
+never been there. The intolerable burden of him slipped from her; all
+morning she had a sense of cold clearness and lightness; and she judged
+that her deliverance was complete.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had waited a long time with her car drawn up close under the house
+wall in the long street at Melle. McClane's car stood in front of her,
+waiting for John. He was up there on the battlefield, with Sutton and
+McClane. McClane had kept him off it all day; he had come to her when
+they started and told her not to worry. Conway would be all right. He
+would see that he didn't get into places where he--well, unsuitable
+places. He would keep him driving. But in the end one of the stretcher
+bearers had given in, and John had to take his turn.
+
+He had been keen to go. Keen. She could see him swinging along up the
+road to the battlefield and McClane with him, running to keep up with his
+tall stride.
+
+She had taken her turn too and she knew what it was like up there.
+Endless turnip fields; turnips thrown up as if they had been pulled,
+livid roots that rotted, and the wounded and the dead men lying out among
+them. You went stumbling; the turnips rolled and slipped under your feet.
+Seeing things.
+
+Her mind looked the other way, frightened. She was tired out, finished;
+she could have gone to sleep now, sitting up there on the car. It would
+be disgraceful if she went to sleep....
+
+She mustn't think about the battlefield. She couldn't think; she could
+only look on at things coming up in her mind. Hoeing turnips at Barrow
+Hill Farm. Supposing you found dead men lying out on the fields at
+Stow? You would mind that more; it would be more horrible.... She saw
+herself coming over the fields carrying a lamb that she had taken from
+its dead mother. Then she saw John coming up the field to their seat in
+the beech ring. _That_ hurt her; she couldn't bear it; she mustn't
+think about that.
+
+John was all right; he wasn't shirking. They had been away so long now
+that she knew they must have gone far down the battlefield, deep into it;
+the edges and all the nearer places had been gleaned. It would be dark
+before they came back.
+
+It was getting dark now, and she was afraid that when the light went she
+would go to sleep. If only she wasn't so tired.
+
+She was so drowsy that at first she didn't hear McClane speaking, she
+hadn't seen him come to the step of the car.
+
+McClane's voice sounded soft and unnatural and a little mysterious.
+
+"I'm afraid something's--happened."
+
+"Who to?"
+
+"We-ell--"
+
+The muffled drawl irritated her. Why couldn't he speak out?
+
+"Is John hurt?"
+
+"I'm afraid so."
+
+"Is he killed?"
+
+"Well--I don't know that he can live. A German's put a bullet into him."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+She jumped down off the car.
+
+McClane laid his hand on her arm. "Don't. We shall bring him in--"
+
+"He's dead then?"
+
+"I think so--You'd better not go to him."
+
+"Of course I'm going to him. Where _is_ he?"
+
+He steered her very quickly and carefully across the street, then led her
+with his arm in hers, pressing her back to the dark shelter of the
+houses. They heard the barking of machine guns from the battlefield at
+the top and the rattle of the bullets on the causeway. These sounds
+seemed to her to have no significance. As if they had existed only in
+some unique relation to John Conway, his death robbed them of vitality.
+
+The door of the house opened a little way; they slipped into the long
+narrow room lighted by a few oil lamps at one end. At the other John's
+body lay on a stretcher set up on a trestle table, his feet turned
+outwards to the door, ready. The corners at this end were so dark that
+the body seemed to stretch across the whole width of the room. A soldier
+came forward with a lighted candle and gave it to McClane. And she saw
+John's face; the bridge of his nose, with its winged nostrils lifted. His
+head was tilted upwards at the chin; that gave it a noble look. His mouth
+was open, ever so slightly open ... McClane shifted the light so that it
+fell on his forehead.... Black eyebrows curling up like little
+moustaches.... The half-dropped eyelids guarded the dead eyes.
+
+She thought of how he used to dream. All his dream was in his dead face;
+his dead face was cold and beautiful like his dream.
+
+As she looked at him her breast closed down on her heart as though it
+would never lift again; her breath shuddered there under her tightened
+throat. She could feel McClane's hand pressing heavily on her shoulder.
+She had no strength to shake it off; she was even glad of it. She felt
+small and weak and afraid; afraid, not of the beautiful thing that lay
+there, but of something terrible and secret that it hid, something that
+any minute she would have to know about.
+
+"Where was he hit?"
+
+"In the back."
+
+She trembled and McClane's hand pressed closer. "The bullet passed clean
+through his heart. He didn't suffer."
+
+"He was getting in Germans?"
+
+"I don't--quite--know--" McClane measured his words out one by one,
+"what--he was doing. Sutton was with him. He knows."
+
+"Where _is_ Billy?"
+
+"Over there. Do you want him?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+A soldier brought a chair for her. She sat down with her back to the
+trestle table. At the lighted end of the room she saw Sutton stooping
+over a young Belgian captain, buttoning his tunic under the sling he had
+adjusted. The captain's face showed pure and handsome, like a girl's,
+like a young nun's, bound round and chin-wrapped in the white bandages.
+He sat on the floor in front of Sutton's table with his legs stretched
+out flat. His back was propped against the thigh of a Belgian soldier
+seated on an upturned barrel. Her hurt eyes saw them very plain and with
+detail in the light of Sutton's lamp.
+
+That part of the room was full of soldiers. She noticed that they kept
+clear of the trestle table as they went in and out. Only one of them, the
+soldier who supported the young captain, kept on looking, raising his
+head and looking there as if he couldn't turn his eyes away. He faced
+her. His rifle stood steadied by his knees, the bayonet pointing up
+between his eyes.
+
+She found herself thinking. It was Sutton's back that made her think.
+John must have been stooping over the German like that. John's wound
+was in his back. But if he was stooping it couldn't have come that
+way. The bullet would have gone through his chest.... Perhaps he had
+turned to pick up his stretcher. Billy was there. He would tell her
+how it had happened.
+
+She thought: No. I've had enough. I shall give it up. I won't ask him.
+But she knew that she would ask him. Once started, having gone so far,
+flash by flash and step by step, she couldn't give it up; she would go
+on, even now, till her knowledge was complete. Then she was aware again
+of the soldier's eyes.
+
+They were very large and bright and black in his smooth boy's face; he
+had a small innocent boy's mouth that seemed to move, restless and
+fascinated, like his eyes. Presently she saw that he was looking at her,
+that his eyes returned to her again and again, as if he were aware of
+some connection between her and the thing that fascinated him, as if _he_
+were somehow connected.
+
+He was listening to her now as Sutton spoke to her.
+
+"We must get him away quick."
+
+"Yes. Do let's get him away."
+
+Sutton shook his head. He was thinking of the wounded captain.
+
+"We can't yet. I'll come back for him."
+
+"Then I'll wait with him here."
+
+"Oh no--I think--"
+
+"I can't leave him."
+
+"It isn't safe. The place may be taken."
+
+"I won't leave him." Sutton hesitated. "I won't, Billy."
+
+"McClane, she says she won't leave him."
+
+"Then," McClane said, "we must take him now. We'll have to make
+room somehow."
+
+(To make room for him--somehow.)
+
+Sutton and the soldier carried the captain out and came back for John's
+body. The Belgian sprang forward with eager, subservient alacrity to put
+himself at the head of the stretcher, but Sutton thrust him aside.
+
+The Belgian shrugged his shoulders and picked up his rifle with an air of
+exaggerated unconcern. Sutton and McClane carried out the stretcher.
+
+Charlotte was following them when the soldier stopped her.
+
+"Mademoiselle--"
+
+He had propped his rifle against the trestles and stood there, groping in
+his pocket. A dirty handkerchief, dragged up by his fumbling, hung out by
+its corner. All along the sharp crease there was a slender smear of
+blood. He looked down at it and pushed it back out of her sight.
+
+He had taken something out of his pocket.
+
+"I will give you this. I found it on the battlefield."
+
+He handed her a small leather pocketbook that was John's. It had her
+photograph in it and his, taken together.
+
+      *       * * * *
+
+They were putting him out of sight, under the hood of the ambulance, and
+she waited there when the war correspondent came up.
+
+"_Can_ you tell me the name of the volunteer who's been killed?"
+
+"Conway. John Roden Conway."
+
+"What? _That_ man? The man who raced the Germans into Zele?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "that man."
+
+      *       * * * *
+
+She was in John's room, packing, gathering together the things she would
+have to take to his father. Sutton came to her there.
+
+They had orders to be ready for the retreat any time that night.
+
+Billy had brought her John's wrist watch and cigarette case.
+
+"Billy," she said, "that soldier gave me this."
+
+She showed him the pocketbook.
+
+"What soldier?"
+
+"The one who was with the captain."
+
+"_He_ gave it you?"
+
+"Yes. He said he found it on the battlefield. It must have dropped out of
+John's pocket."
+
+"It couldn't have dropped.... I wonder why he kept that."
+
+"But he didn't keep it. He gave it to me."
+
+"He was going to keep it, or he'd have handed it over to me with the
+other things."
+
+"Does it matter?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+She thought: "Why can't he leave it alone? They _had_ all his things, his
+poor things."
+
+But Sutton was still thoughtful. "I wonder why he gave it you."
+
+"I think he was sorry."
+
+"_Was_ he!"
+
+"Sorry for me, I mean."
+
+Sutton said nothing. He was absorbed in contemplating the photograph.
+They had been taken standing by the hurdle of the sheepfold, she with the
+young lamb in her arms and John looking down at her.
+
+"That was taken at Barrow Hill Farm," she said, "where we were together.
+He looked just like that.... Oh, Billy, do you think the past's really
+past?... Isn't there some way he could go on being what he _was_?"
+
+"I don't know, Sharlie, I don't know."
+
+"Why couldn't he have stayed there! Then he'd always have been like that.
+We should never have known."
+
+"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 to _know_."
+
+"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 he _leave_ the 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--"
+
+"_Calling_ to 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. He _said_ his 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.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+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?"
+
+"_I_ know. 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 makes _me_ different. 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's _done_, 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 your _face_...."
+
+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 I _have_ done, 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 least _I_ can'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't _want_ to 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 to _me_. 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?"
+
+"All _this_.... I'd give anything to care for you, Billy dear, but I
+don't care. I _can'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."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+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 transport _Victoria_. 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. It _happened_. The day we were in
+Bruges. 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."
+
+"_I_ do."
+
+"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 about _them_. 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'm_ fit. What's the matter with me?"
+
+"Not much. Your body's all right. And your mind _was_ all right till
+Conway 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 the _truth_ about 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 know _why_.... Conway was an out and out degenerate.
+He couldn't help _that_. 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 could _feel_ passion, 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. _That_ upset 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 of
+the 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 to _me_. 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."
+
+"_Had_ he?" 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. He _had_ to 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 even _his_ way. 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 that _was_ what 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.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romantic, by May Sinclair
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romantic, by May Sinclair
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Romantic
+
+Author: May Sinclair
+
+Release Date: August 25, 2004 [EBook #13292]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMANTIC ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beginners Projects, Mary Meehan and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE ROMANTIC
+
+                             BY MAY SINCLAIR
+
+                                  1920
+
+
+
+
+_Every kind and beautiful thing on earth has been made so by some
+cruelty_.
+
+Saying of the Romantic
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+BOOK ONE Charlotte Redhead
+
+BOOK TWO John Roden Conway
+
+
+
+
+THE ROMANTIC
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+CHARLOTTE REDHEAD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+They turned again at the end of the platform.
+
+The tail of her long, averted stare was conscious of him, of his big,
+tweed-suited body and its behaviour, squaring and swelling and tightening
+in its dignity, of its heavy swing to her shoulder as they turned.
+
+She could stave off the worst by not looking at him, by looking at other
+things, impersonal, innocent things; the bright, yellow, sharp gabled
+station; the black girders of the bridge; the white signal post beside it
+holding out a stiff, black-banded arm; the two rails curving there, with
+the flat white glitter and sweep of scythes; pointed blades coming
+together, buried in the bend of the cutting.
+
+Small three-cornered fields, clean edged like the pieces of a puzzle, red
+brown and pure bright green, dovetailed under the high black bar of the
+bridge. She supposed you could paint that.
+
+Turn.
+
+Clear stillness after the rain. She caught herself smiling at the noise
+her boots made clanking on the tiles with the harsh, joyous candour that
+he hated. He walked noiselessly, with a jerk of bluff knickerbockered
+hips, raising himself on his toes like a cat.
+
+She could see him moving about in her room, like that, in the half
+darkness, feeling for his things, with shamed, helpless gestures. She
+could see him tiptoeing down her staircase, furtive, afraid. Always
+afraid they would be found out.
+
+That would have ruined him.
+
+Oh well--why should he have ruined himself for her? Why? But she had
+wanted, wanted to ruin herself for him, to stand, superb and reckless,
+facing the world with him. If that could have been the way of it.
+
+Turn.
+
+That road over the hill--under the yellow painted canopy sticking out
+from the goods station--it would be the Cirencester road, the Fosse Way.
+She would tramp along it when he was gone.
+
+Turn.
+
+He must have seen her looking at the clock. Three minutes more.
+
+Suddenly, round the bend, under the bridge, the train.
+
+He was carrying it off fairly well, with his tight red face and his stare
+over her head when she looked at him, his straight smile when she said
+"Good-bye and Good-luck!"
+
+And her silly hand clutching the window ledge. She let go, quick, afraid
+he would turn sentimental at the end. But no; he was settling down
+heavily in his corner, blinking and puffing over his cigar.
+
+That was her knapsack lying on the seat there. She picked it up and slung
+it over her shoulder.
+
+Cirencester? Or back to Stow-on-the-Wold? If only he hadn't come there
+last night. If only he had let her alone.
+
+She meditated. She would have to wire to Gwinnie Denning to meet her at
+Cirencester. She wondered whether Gwinnie's mother's lumbago would last
+over the week-end. It was Friday. Perhaps Gwinnie had started. Perhaps
+there would be a wire from her at the hotel.
+
+Going on to Cirencester when you wanted to be in Stow-on-the-Wold, what
+_was_ it but a cowardly retreat? Driven out of Stow-on-the-Wold by
+Gibson? Not she!
+
+Dusk at ten o'clock in the morning under the trees on the mile-long hill.
+You climbed up and up a steep green tunnel. The sun would be blazing at
+its mouth on the top. Nothing would matter. Certainly not this affair
+with Gibson Herbert. She could see clearly her immense, unique passion
+thus diminished. Surprising what a lot of it you could forget. Clean
+forget. She supposed you forgot because you couldn't bear to remember.
+
+But there were days that stood out; hours; little minutes that thrilled
+you even now and stung.
+
+This time, two years ago, that hot August. The day in the office when
+everything went wrong all at once and the clicking of her typewriter
+maddened him and he sent her out of his room.
+
+The day when he kept her over-time. The others had gone and they were
+there by themselves, the big man in his big room and she in her den, the
+door open between. Suddenly she saw him standing in the doorway, looking
+at her. She knew then. She could feel the blood rushing in her brain; the
+stabbing click of the typewriter set up little whirling currents that
+swamped her thoughts.
+
+Her wet fingers kept slipping from the keys. He came and took her in his
+arms. She lay back in his arms, crying. Crying because she was happy,
+because she knew.
+
+She remembered now what he had said then. "You must have known. You must
+have thought of me. You must have wanted me to take you in my arms." And
+her answer. "No. I didn't. I didn't think of it."
+
+And his smile. His unbelieving smile. He thought she was lying. He always
+thought people were lying. Women. He thought women always lied about what
+they wanted.
+
+The first time. In her Bloomsbury room, one evening, and the compact they
+made then, sitting on the edge of the sofa, like children, holding each
+other's hands and swearing never to go back on it, never to go back on
+themselves or on each other. If it ever had to end, a clean cut. No going
+back on that either.
+
+The first night, in the big, gloomy bedroom of the hotel in Glasgow. The
+thick, grey daylight oozing in at the window out of the black street; and
+Gibson lying on his back, beside her, sleeping, the sheet dragged
+sideways across his great chest. His innocent eyelids.
+
+And the morning after; the happiness. All day the queer, exalted feeling
+that she was herself, Charlotte Redhead, at last, undeceived and
+undeceiving.
+
+The day his wife came into the office. Her unhappy eyes and small,
+sharp-pointed face, shrinking into her furs. Her name was Effie.
+
+He had told her in the beginning that he had left off caring for his
+wife. They couldn't hurt her; she didn't care enough. She never had
+cared. There was another fellow. Effie would be all right.
+
+Yet, after she had seen Effie it had never been the same thing. She
+couldn't remember, quite, how it had been.
+
+She could remember the ecstasy, how it would come swinging through you,
+making you blind and deaf to impersonal, innocent things while it
+lasted. Even then there was always something beyond it, something you
+looked for and missed, something you thought would come that never came.
+There was something he did. She couldn't remember. That would be one of
+the things you wanted to forget. She saw his thick fingers at dessert,
+peeling the peaches.
+
+Perhaps his way of calling her "Poor Sharlie?" Things he let out--"I
+never thought I could have loved a girl with bobbed hair. A white and
+black girl." There must have been other girls then. A regular procession.
+Before he married Effie.
+
+She could see them. Pink and gold girls, fluffy and fat; girls with red
+hair; brown haired girls with wide slippery mouths. Then Effie. Then
+herself, with her thick bobbed mane and white face. And the beautiful
+mouth he praised so.
+
+Was it the disgust of knowing that you were only one of a procession? Or
+was it that Effie's sad, sharp face slipped between?
+
+And the end of it. The break-down, when Effie was ill.
+
+His hysterical cries. "My wife, Sharlie, my wife. We oughtn't to have
+done it....
+
+"... I can't forgive myself, Sharlie. I've been a brute, a beast, a
+stupid animal....
+
+"... When I think of what we've done to her--the little innocent
+thing--the awful unhappiness--I could kill myself."
+
+"Do you mean she knows?"
+
+"She thinks. That's bad enough. If she knew, it would kill her."
+
+"You said she wouldn't care. You said there was another man."
+
+"There wasn't."
+
+"You lied, then?"
+
+"Of course I lied. You wouldn't have come to me if I hadn't."
+
+"You told me you didn't care for her."
+
+He had met that with his "Well--what did you want?"
+
+She went over and over it, turning it round and round to see if there was
+any sort of light it would look a bit better in. She had been going to
+give him up so beautifully. The end of it was to have been wonderful,
+quiet, like a heavenly death, so that you would get a thrill out of that
+beauty when you remembered. All the beauty of it from the beginning,
+taken up and held together, safe at the end. You wouldn't remember
+anything else. And he had killed it, with his conscience, suddenly sick,
+whining, slobbering, vomiting remorse--Turning on her.
+
+"I can't think what you wanted with me. Why couldn't you have let
+me alone!"
+
+Her own voice, steady and hard. "If you feel dirty, go and wash yourself
+outside. Don't try and rub it off on me. I want to keep clean."
+
+"Isn't it a bit too late?"
+
+"Not if you clear out at once. This minute." He called her "a cruel
+little devil."
+
+She could forgive him for that. She could forgive him ending it in any
+beastly way he liked, provided he did end it. But not last night. To come
+crawling back, three months after, wanting to begin again. Thinking it
+was possible.
+
+There had been nothing worse than that. Except that one dreadful minute
+last year when he had wanted to raise her salary--afterwards--and she had
+said "What _for_?" And their faces had turned from each other, flaming
+with the fire of her refusal.
+
+What had he really thought of her? Did he think she wanted to get
+anything out of their passion? What could you want to get out of it, or
+give, but joy? Pure joy. Beauty.
+
+At the bend of the road the trees parted. A slender blue channel of sky
+flowed overhead between the green tops.
+
+If not joy, then truth; reality. The clear reality of yourself, Charlotte
+Redhead. Of Gibson Herbert. Even now it would be all right so long as you
+knew what it was and didn't lie about it.
+
+That evening in the office when he came to her--she could remember the
+feeling that shot up suddenly and ran over her and shook her brain,
+making her want him to take her in his arms. It was that. It had never
+been anything but that. She _had_ wanted him to take her, and he knew
+it. Only, if he hadn't come to her and looked at her she wouldn't have
+thought of it; she would have gone on working for him without
+thinking. That was what he didn't know, what he wouldn't have believed
+if you had told him.
+
+She had come to the top of the hill. At the crossroads she saw the grey
+front of her inn, the bow window jutting, small black shining panes
+picked out with the clean white paint of the frame-work.
+
+Upstairs their breakfast table stood in the window bow as they had left
+it. Bread he had broken on the greasy plate. His cup with the coffee he
+couldn't drink. Pathetic, if you hadn't remembered.
+
+"You might as well. If it isn't you, it'll be another woman, Sharlie. If
+it isn't me, it'll be another man."
+
+That was what he had thought her.
+
+It didn't matter.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+She stood at the five roads, swinging her stick, undecided.
+
+The long line of the beeches drew her, their heads bowed to the north as
+the south wind had driven them. The blue-white road drew her, rising,
+dipping and rising; between broad green borders under grey walls.
+
+She walked. She could feel joy breaking loose in her again, beating up
+and up, provoked and appeased by the strong, quick movement of her body.
+The joy she had gone to her lover for, the pure joy he couldn't give her,
+coming back out of the time before she knew him.
+
+Nothing mattered when your body was light and hard and you could feel the
+ripple and thrill of the muscles in your stride.
+
+She wouldn't have to think of him again. She wouldn't have to think of
+any other man. She didn't want any more of that again, ever. She could go
+on and on like this, by herself, without even Gwinnie; not caring a damn.
+
+If she had been cruel--if she had wanted to hurt Effie. She hadn't meant
+to hurt her.
+
+She thought of things. Places she had been happy in. She loved the high
+open country. Fancy sitting with Gibson in his stuffy office, day after
+day, for five years. Fancy going to Glasgow with him. Glasgow--
+
+No. No.
+
+She thought: "I can pretend it didn't happen. Nothing's happened. I'm
+myself. The same me I was before."
+
+Suddenly she stood still. On the top of the ridge the whole sky opened,
+throbbing with light, immense as the sky above a plain. Hills--thousands
+of hills. Thousands of smooth curves joining and parting, overlapping,
+rolling together.
+
+What did you want? What did you want? How could you want anything but
+this for ever?
+
+Across the green field she saw the farm. Tall, long-skirted elms standing
+up in a row before the sallow ricks and long grey barns. Under the loaded
+droop of green a grey sharp-pointed gable, topped by a stone ball. Four
+Scotch firs beside it, slender and strange.
+
+She stood leaning over the white gate, looking and thinking.
+
+Funny things, colts grazing. Short bodies that stopped at their
+shoulders; long, long necks hanging down like tails, pushing their heads
+along the ground. She could hear their nostrils breathing and the
+scrinch, scrinch of their teeth tearing the grass.
+
+You could be happy living on a farm, looking after the animals.
+
+You could learn farming. People paid.
+
+Suddenly she knew what she would do. She would do _that_. It wasn't
+reasonable to go on sitting in a stuffy office doing work you hated when
+you could pack up and go. She couldn't have stuck to it for five years if
+it hadn't been for Gibson--falling in love with him, the most
+unreasonable thing of all. She didn't care if you had to pay to learn
+farming. You had to pay for everything you learned. There were the two
+hundred pounds poor dear Daddy left, doing nothing. She could pay.
+
+She would go down to the farm now, this minute, and see if they
+would take her.
+
+As she crossed the field she heard the farmyard gate open and shut.
+
+The man came up towards her in the narrow path. He was looking at her as
+he came, tilting his head back to get her clear into his eyes under the
+shade of his slouched hat.
+
+She called to him. "Is this your farm?" And he halted.
+
+He smiled; the narrow smile of small, fine lips, with a queer, winged
+movement of the moustache, a flutter of dark down. She saw his eyes, hard
+and keen, dark blue, like the blade of a new knife.
+
+"No. I wish it was my farm. Why?"
+
+She could see now it wasn't. He was out tramping. The corner of a
+knapsack bulged over his right shoulder. Rough greenish coat and
+stockings--dust-coloured riding breeches--
+
+But there was something about him. Something tall and distant; slender
+and strange, like the fir-trees.
+
+"Because whoever's farm it is I want to see him."
+
+"You won't see him. There isn't anybody there."
+
+"Oh."
+
+He lingered.
+
+"Do you know who he is?" she said.
+
+"No. I don't know anything. I don't even know where I am. But I hope it's
+Bourton-on-the-Hill."
+
+"I'm afraid it isn't. It's Stow-on-the-Wold."
+
+He laughed and shifted his knapsack to his left shoulder, and held up his
+chin. His eyes slewed round, raking the horizon.
+
+"It's all right," she said. "You can get to Bourton-on-the-Hill. I'll
+show you." She pointed. "You see where that clump of trees is--like a
+battleship, sailing over a green hill. That's about where it is."
+
+"Thanks. I've been trying to get there all afternoon."
+
+"Where have you come from?"
+
+"Stanway. The other side of that ridge."
+
+"You should have kept along the top. You've come miles out of your way."
+
+"I like going out of my way. I did it for fun. For the adventure."
+
+You could see he was innocent and happy, like a child. She turned and
+went with him up the field.
+
+She wouldn't go to Bourton-on-the-Hill. She would go back to the hotel
+and see whether there was a wire for her from Gwinnie.... He liked going
+out of his way.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "there's _something_ the other side of that gate."
+
+"I hate to tell you. There's a road there. It's your way. The end of the
+adventure."
+
+He laughed again, showing small white teeth this time. The gate fell to
+with a thud and a click.
+
+"What do I do now?"
+
+"You go north. Straight ahead. Turn down the fifth or sixth lane on your
+right--you'll see the sign-post. Then the first lane on your left.
+That'll bring you out at the top of the hill."
+
+"Thanks. Thanks most awfully." He raised his hat, backing from her,
+holding her in his eyes till he turned.
+
+He would be out of sight now at the pace he was going; his young,
+slender, skimming stride.
+
+She stood on the top of the rise and looked round. He was halting down
+there at the bend by the grey cone of the lime kiln under the ash-tree.
+He had turned and had his face towards her. Above his head the battleship
+sailed on its green field.
+
+He began to come back, slowly, as if he were looking for something
+dropped on his path; then suddenly he stopped, turned again and was gone.
+
+There was no wire from Gwinnie. She had waited a week now. She
+wondered how long it would be before Gwinnie's mother's lumbago gave
+in and let her go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She knew it by heart now, the long, narrow coffee-room of the hotel. The
+draped chimney piece and little oblong gilt-framed mirror at one end; at
+the other the bowed window looking west on to the ash-tree and the
+fields; the two straight windows between, looking south on to the street.
+
+To-night the long table down the middle was set with a white cloth. The
+family from Birmingham had come. Father and mother, absurd pouter-pigeons
+swelling and strutting; two putty-faced unmarried daughters, sulking; one
+married one, pink and proper, and the son-in-law, sharp eyed and
+bald-headed. From their table in the centre they stared at her where she
+dined by herself at her table in the bow.
+
+Two days. She didn't think she could bear it one day more.
+
+She could see herself as she came down the room; her knitted silk sport's
+coat, bright petunia, flaming; thick black squares of her bobbed hair
+hanging over eyebrows and ears. And behind, the four women's heads
+turning on fat necks to look at her, reflected.
+
+Gwinnie's letter was there, stuck up on the mantel-piece. Gwinnie could
+come at the week-end; she implored her to hang on for five days longer,
+not to leave Stow-on-the-Wold till they could see it together. A letter
+from Gibson, repeating himself.
+
+The family from Birmingham were going through the door; fat faces
+straining furtively. If they knew--if they only knew. She stood, reading.
+
+She heard the door shut. She could look in the glass now and amuse
+herself by the sight they had stared at. The white face raised on the
+strong neck and shoulders. Soft white nose, too thick at the nuzzling
+tip. Brown eyes straight and wide open. Deep-grooved, clear-cut eyelids,
+heavy lashes. Mouth--clear-cut arches, moulded corners, brooding. Her
+eyes and her mouth. She could see they were strange. She could see they
+were beautiful.
+
+And herself, her mysterious, her secret self, Charlotte Redhead. It had
+been secret and mysterious to itself once, before she knew.
+
+She didn't want to be secret and mysterious. Of all things she hated
+secrecy and mystery. She would tell Gwinnie about Gibson Herbert when she
+came. She would have to tell her.
+
+Down at the end of the looking-glass picture, behind her, the bow window
+and the slender back of a man standing there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had got him clear by this time. If he went to-morrow he would
+stay, moving about forever in your mind. The young body, alert and
+energetic; slender gestures of hands. The small imperious head carried
+high. The spare, oval face with the straight-jutting, pointed chin.
+Honey-white face, thin dusk and bistre of eyelids and hollow temples
+and the roots of the hair. Its look of being winged, lifted up, ready
+to start off on an adventure. Hair brushed back in two sleek, dark
+wings. The straight slender nose, with the close upward wings of its
+nostrils (it wasn't Roman after all). Under it the winged flutter of
+his mouth when he smiled.
+
+Black eyebrows almost meeting, the outer ends curling up queerly, like
+little moustaches. And always the hard, blue knife-blade eyes.
+
+She knew his name the first day. He had told her. Conway. John
+Roden Conway.
+
+The family from Birmingham had frightened him. So he sat at her table in
+the bow. They talked. About places--places. Places they had seen and
+hadn't seen; places they wanted to see, and the ways you could get to
+places. He trusted to luck; he risked things; he was out, he said, for
+risk. She steered by the sun, by instinct, by the map in her head. She
+remembered. But you could buy maps. He bought one the next day.
+
+They went for long walks together. She found out the field paths. And
+they talked. Long, innocent conversations. He told her about himself. He
+came from Coventry. His father was a motor car manufacturer; that was why
+_he_ liked tramping.
+
+She told him she was going to learn farming. You could be happy all day
+long looking after animals. Swinging up on the big bare backs of cart
+horses and riding them to water; milking cows and feeding calves. And
+lambs. When their mothers were dead. They would run to you then, and
+climb into your lap and sit there--sucking your fingers.
+
+As they came in and went out together the family from Birmingham
+glared at them.
+
+"Did you see how they glared?"
+
+"Do you mind?" he said.
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"No more do I. It doesn't matter what people like that do. Their souls
+are horrible. They leave a glairy trail everywhere they go. If they were
+dead--stretched out on their death beds--you'd see their souls, like
+long, fat white slugs stretched out too, glued to their bodies.... You
+know what they think? They think we met each other on purpose. They think
+we're engaged."
+
+"I don't care," she said. "It doesn't matter what they think."
+
+They laughed at the silliness of the family from Birmingham. He had been
+there five days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I--, sa-ay--"
+
+Gwinnie's voice drawled in slow meditative surprise.
+
+The brooding curiosity had gone out of her face. Gwinnie's face, soft and
+schoolgirlish between the fawn gold bands and plaited ear bosses of her
+hair, the pink, pushed out mouth, the little routing nose, the thick grey
+eyes, suddenly turned on you, staring.
+
+Gwinnie had climbed up on to the bed to hear about it. She sat hunched up
+with her arms round her knees rocking herself on the end of her spine;
+and though she stared she still rocked. She was happy and excited because
+of her holiday.
+
+"It can't make any difference, Gwin. I'm the same Charlotte. Don't tell
+me you didn't know I was like that."
+
+"Of course I knew it. I know a jolly lot more than you think, kid."
+
+"I'm not a kid--if you _are_ two years older."
+
+"Why--you're not twenty-four yet.... It's the silliness of it beats me.
+Going off like that, with the first silly cuckoo that turns up."
+
+"He wasn't the first that turned up, I mean. He was the third that
+counted. There was poor Binky, the man I was engaged to. And Dicky
+Raikes; he wanted me to go to Mexico with him. Just for a lark, and I
+wouldn't. And George Corfield. _He_ wanted me to marry him. And I
+wouldn't."
+
+"Why didn't you?"
+
+"Because Dicky's always funny when you want to be serious and George is
+always serious when you want to be funny. Besides, he's so good. His
+goodness would have been too much for me altogether. Fancy _beginning_
+with George."
+
+"This seems to have been a pretty rotten beginning, anyway."
+
+"The beginning was all right. It's the end that's rotten. The really
+awful thing was Effie."
+
+"Look here--" Gwinnie left off rocking and swung herself to the edge of
+the bed. Her face looked suddenly mature and full of wisdom. "I don't
+believe in that Effie business. You want to think you stopped it because
+of Effie; but you didn't. You've got to see it straight.... It was his
+lying and funking that finished you. He fixed on the two things you
+can't stand."
+
+The two things. The two things.
+
+"I know what you want. You want to kill him in my mind, so that I shan't
+think of him any more. I'm not thinking. I only wanted you to know."
+
+"Does anybody else know?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well--don't you let them."
+
+Gwinnie slid to her feet and went to the looking-glass. She stood there a
+minute, pinning closer the crushed bosses of her hair. Then she turned.
+
+"What are you going to do with that walking-tour johnnie?"
+
+"John--Conway? You couldn't do anything with him if you tried. He's miles
+beyond all that."
+
+"All _what_?"
+
+"The rotten things people do. The rotten things they think. You're safe
+with him, Gwinnie. Safe. Safe. You've only to look at him."
+
+"I _have_ looked at him. Whatever you do, don't _tell_ him, Sharlie."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Charlotte sat on the top of the slope in the field below Barrow Farm.
+John Conway lay at her feet. The tall beeches stood round them in an
+unclosed ring.
+
+Through the opening she could see the farmhouse, three ball-topped
+gables, the middle one advancing, the front built out there in a huge
+door-place that carried a cross windowed room under its roof.
+
+Low heavy-browed mullions; the panes, black shining slits in the grey and
+gold of the stone. All their rooms. Hers and Gwinnie's under the near
+gable by the fir-trees, Mr. and Mrs. Burton's under the far gable by the
+elms, John's by itself in the middle, jutting out.
+
+She could see the shallow garden dammed up to the house out of the green
+field by its wall, spilling trails of mauve campanula, brimming with pink
+phlox and white phlox, the blue spires of the lupins piercing up through
+the froth.
+
+Sunday evening half an hour before milking-time. From September
+nineteen-thirteen to December--to March nineteen-fourteen, to June--she
+had been at the farm nine months. June--May--April. This time three
+months ago John had come.
+
+In the bottom of the field, at the corner by the yard-gate, under the
+elms, she could see Gwinnie astride over the tilted bucket, feeding the
+calves. It was Gwinnie's turn.
+
+She heard the house door open and shut. The Burtons came down the flagged
+path between the lavender bushes, leaving them to their peace before
+milking time.
+
+Looking down she saw John's eyes blinking up at her through their lashes.
+His chest showed a red-brown V in the open neck of his sweater. He had
+been quiet a long time. His voice came up out of his quietness, sudden
+and queer.
+
+"Keep your head like that one minute--looking down. I want your
+eyelids.... Now I know."
+
+"What?"
+
+"What you're like. You're like Jeanne d'Arc.... There's a picture--the
+photo of a stone head, I think--in a helmet, looking down, with
+big drooped eyelids. If it isn't Jeanne it ought to be. Anyhow it's
+you.... That's what's been bothering me. I thought it was just because
+you had black hair bobbed like a fifteen century page. But it isn't that.
+It's her forehead and her blunt nose, and her innocent, heroic chin. And
+the thick, beautiful mouth.... And the look--as if she could see behind
+her eyelids--dreadful things going to happen to her. All the butchery."
+
+"I don't see any dreadful things going to happen to me."
+
+"No. Her sight was second sight; and your sight is memory. You never
+forget things.... I shall call you Jeanne. You ought to wear armour and a
+helmet." His voice ceased and began again. "What are you thinking of?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't think much, ever."
+
+She was wondering what _he_ would think if he knew.
+
+She wondered what the farm would be like without him. Would it be what it
+was last autumn and winter and in the spring before he came? But she had
+been happy all that time without him, even in the hard, frost-biting
+winter. When you had gone through that you knew the worst of Barrow Farm.
+It made your face coarse, though.
+
+Joan of Arc was a peasant. No wonder she was beginning to look like her.
+If John went--
+
+"John, shall you stay on here?"
+
+"I don't know. I shall stick to farming if that's what you mean. Though
+it isn't what I wanted."
+
+"What did you want?"
+
+"To go into the Army."
+
+"Why didn't you then?"
+
+"They wouldn't have me. There's something wrong with my eyes.... So the
+land's got me instead."
+
+"Me too. We ought to have been doing this all our lives."
+
+"We'll jolly well have to. We shall never be any good indoors again."
+
+"Has old Burton said anything?"
+
+"I'm getting on. I can drive as straight a furrow as any man in
+Gloucestershire. I've told my father that. He detests me; but he'd say
+you ought to work up from the plough-tail, if you _must_ farm. He turned
+all of us through his workshops before he took us into the business. He
+liked to see us soaked in dirt and oil, crawling on our stomachs under
+his engines. He'd simply love to see me here standing up to my knees in
+wet cow-dung."
+
+"He won't mind your leaving him?"
+
+"Not if I make a good thing out of this. Anyhow he knows he can't keep me
+off it. If I can't fight I'll farm. It's in my blood and nerves and
+memory. He sits there selling motor cars, but his people were fighting
+men. They fought to get land; they fought to keep it. My mother's people,
+the Rodens, were yeoman farmers. That's why my furrow's so straight."
+
+"And that's why you came here?"
+
+"No. That isn't why."
+
+"Aren't you glad you came? Did you ever feel anything like the
+peace of it?"
+
+"It's not the peace of it I want, Charlotte,--Jeanne, I mean. It's
+the fight. Fighting with things that would kill you if you didn't.
+Wounding the earth to sow in it and make it feed you. Ploughing,
+Charlotte--Jeanne. Feeling the thrust and the drive through, and the
+thing listing over on the slope. Seeing the steel blade shine, and the
+long wounds coming in rows, hundreds of wounds, wet and shining."
+
+"What makes you think of wounds?"
+
+"I don't know. I see it like that. Cutting through."
+
+"I don't see it like that one bit. The earth's so kind, so beautiful. And
+the hills--look at them, the clean, quiet backs, smoothed with light. You
+could stroke them. And the fields, those lovely coloured fans opening and
+shutting."
+
+"They're lovely because of what's been done to them. If those hills had
+been left to themselves there'd have been nothing on them but trees.
+Think of the big fight with the trees, the hacking through, the cutting.
+The trunks staggering and falling. You'd begin with a little hole in the
+forest like that gap in the belt on the sky-line, and you'd go on hacking
+and cutting. You'd go on.... If you didn't those damned trees would come
+up round you and jam you between their trunks and crush you to red
+pulp.... Supposing this belt of beeches drew in and got tighter and
+tighter--No. There's nothing really kind and beautiful on this earth.
+Except your face. And even your face--"
+
+"My face?--"
+
+"_Could_ be cruel. But it never will be. Something's happened to it. Some
+cruelty. Some damnable cruelty."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Every kind and beautiful thing on earth, Jeanne, has been made so by
+some cruelty."
+
+"That's all rot. Utter rot. You don't know what you're talking
+about.... It's milking time. There's Gwinnie semaphoring. Do you know old
+Burton's going to keep us on? He'll pay us wages from this quarter. He
+says we were worth our keep from the third day."
+
+"Do you want to stay on here?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+"Very well then, so do I. That settles it."
+
+"Get up," she said, "and come along. Gwinnie's frantic."
+
+He sat up, bowed forwards, his hands hanging loose over his knees.
+She stood and looked down at him, at the arch of his long, slender
+back dropping to the narrow hips. She could feel the sudden crush of
+her breath in her chest and the sighing throb in her throat and her
+lips parting.
+
+He grasped the hands she stretched out to him at arms' length. She set
+her teeth and pressed her feet to the ground, and leaned back, her weight
+against his weight, tugging.
+
+He came up to his feet, alert, laughing at the heavy strength of her
+pull. As they ran down the field he still held, loosely, like a thing
+forgotten, her right hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Through the long June night on her bed in the room under the gable--the
+hot room that smelt of plaster and of the apples stored in the loft
+behind it--she lay thinking.
+
+Gwinnie had turned her back, burrowing into her pillow with a final shrug
+of her hips. She was asleep now in her corner.
+
+"If I were you I wouldn't think about him, Sharlie"--She knew what
+Gwinnie meant. But thinking was one thing and caring was another.
+Thinking was the antidote to caring. If she had let her mind play freely
+over Gibson Herbert in the beginning--But Gibson stopped her thinking,
+and John Conway made her think. That was the difference.
+
+There was nothing about John that was like Gibson. Not a look, not a
+gesture, not the least thought in his mind. His mind was like his
+body, clean and cold and beautiful. Set on fire only by dreams; loving
+you in a dream, a dream that burned him up and left him cold to you.
+Cold and clean.
+
+There were things she laid up against him, the poor dear; a secret hoard
+of grievances now clear to her in the darkness; she found herself turning
+them over and over, as if positively her mind owed his romantic apathy a
+grudge. Little things she remembered. Three things.
+
+Yesterday in the hayfield, John pitching hay on to the cart, and she
+standing on the top of the load, flattening down the piles as he swung
+them up. Gwinnie came with a big fork, swanking, for fun, trying to pitch
+a whole haycock. In the dark of the room she could see Gwinnie's little
+body straining back from the waist, her legs stiffening, her face pink
+and swollen; and John's face looking at Gwinnie.
+
+She shouted down at him, "Why can't you _take_ the damned thing? She'll
+break her back with it." And he shouted up, "That's her look-out." (But
+he took it.) He didn't like Gwinnie.
+
+That time. And the time Cowslip calved, the darling choosing the one
+night old Burton was away and Jim down with flu. She had to hold the
+lantern. Straw littered in the half-lighted shed. Cowslip swinging her
+bald-faced head round to you, her humble, sorrowful eyes imploring,
+between her groans and the convulsive heavings of her flanks. A noise
+between a groan and a bellow, a supreme convulsion. The dark wall, the
+white funnel of light from the lantern, and John's face in the flash....
+
+But he had been sorry for Cowslip. Going out with the lantern afterwards
+she had found him in the yard, by the wall, bent double, shivering and
+retching. And she had sung out to him "Buck up, John. She's licked it
+clean. It's the dearest little calf you ever saw."
+
+Pity. Pity could drag your face tight and hard, like Burton's when his
+mare, Jenny, died of colic.
+
+But before that--the night they went to Stow Fair together; crossing
+the street at the sharp turn by the church gate, something happened.
+They hadn't heard the motor car coming; it was down on them before they
+could see it, swerving round her side of the street. He had had his
+hand tight on her arm to steer her through the crowd. When the car
+came ... when the car came ... he let go and jumped clean to the curb.
+She could feel the splash-board graze her thigh, as she sprang clear of
+it, quick, like a dog.
+
+She was sure he jumped first. She was sure he hadn't let her go before
+the car came. She could see the blaze of the lamps and feel his grip
+slacken on her arm.
+
+She wasn't sure. He couldn't have jumped. He couldn't have let go. Of
+course he hadn't. She had imagined it. She imagined all sorts of things.
+If she could make them bad enough she would stop thinking about him; she
+would stop caring. She didn't want to care.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Charlotte--when I die, that's where I'd like to be buried."
+
+Coming back from Bourton market they had turned into the churchyard on
+the top of Stow-hill. The long path went straight between the stiff yew
+cones through the green field set with graves.
+
+"On the top, so high up you could almost breathe in your coffin here."
+
+"I don't want to breathe in my coffin. When I'm dead I'm dead, and when
+I'm alive I'm alive. Don't talk about dying."
+
+"Why not? Think of the gorgeous risk of it--the supreme toss up. After
+all, death's the most thrilling thing that happens."
+
+"Whose death?"
+
+"My death."
+
+"Don't _talk_ about it."
+
+"Your death then."
+
+"Oh, mine--"
+
+"Our death, Jeanne."
+
+He turned to her in the path. His mouth was hard now, but his eyes shone
+at her, smiling, suddenly warm, suddenly tender.
+
+She knew herself then; she knew there was one cruelty, one brutality
+beyond bearing, John's death.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+John had gone away for a week.
+
+If she could tire herself out, and not dream. In the slack days between
+hay-time and harvest she was never tired enough. She lay awake, teased by
+the rucking of the coarse hot sheet under her back, and the sweat that
+kept on sliding between her skin and her night gown. And she dreamed.
+
+She was waiting in the beech ring on the top of the field. Inside the
+belt of the tree trunks a belt of stones grew up, like the wall of the
+garden. It went higher and higher and a hole opened in it, a long slit.
+She stuck her head through the hole to look out over the hills.
+
+This was the watch-tower. She knew, as if she remembered it, that John
+had told her to go up and wait for him there; she was keeping watch for
+him on the tower.
+
+Grey mist flowed over the field like water. He was down there in the
+field. If she went to him he would take her in his arms.
+
+She was walking now on the highway to Bourton-on-the-Hill. At the dip
+after the turn shallow water came out of the grass borders and ran
+across the road, cold to her naked feet. She knew that something was
+happening to John. He had gone away and she had got to find him and
+bring him back. She had got to find the clear hill where the battleship
+sailed over the field.
+
+Instead of the ship she found the Barrow Farm beeches. They stood in a
+thick ring round a clearing of grey grass and grey light. John was
+standing there with a woman. She turned and showed her sharp face, the
+colour of white clay, her long evil nose, her eyes tilted corner and the
+thin tail of her mouth, writhing. That was Miss Lister who had been in
+Gibson's office. She had John now.
+
+Forms without faces, shrouded white women, larvae slipped from the black
+grooves of the beech trunks; they made a ring round him with their
+bodies, drew it in tighter and tighter. The grey light beat like a pulse
+with the mounting horror.
+
+She cried out his name, and her voice sounded tragic and immense; sharp
+like a blade of lightning screaming up to the top of the sky. A black
+iron curtain crashed down before her and cut off the dream.
+
+Gwinnie looked up over the crook of her knee from the boot she was
+lacing.
+
+"You made no end of a row in your sleep, Sharlie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had dreamed about him again, the next night. He was walking with her
+on the road from the town to the Farm. By the lime kiln at the turn he
+disappeared. He had never been there, really.
+
+She had gone out to look for him. The road kept on curling round like a
+snake, bringing her back and back to the white gate of the Farm.
+
+When she got through the gate she stepped off the field on to the low
+bridge over a black canal. The long, sharp-pointed road cut straight as a
+dyke through the flat fields, between two lines of slender trees, tall
+poles with tufted tops.
+
+She knew she was awake now because the light whitened and the wind moved
+in the tree tufts and the road felt hard under her feet. When she came to
+the village, to the long grey walls with narrow shutters, she knew John
+was there. He came down the street towards the canal bridge. A group of
+women and children walked with him, dressed in black. Dutch women. Dutch
+babies. She could see their overalls and high caps and large, upturned
+shoes very black and distinct in the white light. This was real.
+
+They pointed their fingers and stared at her with secretive, inimical
+faces. Terror crept in over the street, subtle, drifting and penetrating
+like an odour.
+
+John's face was happy and excited; that was how she knew him. His face
+was real, its happiness and excitement were real. But as he passed her it
+changed; it turned on her with a look she didn't know. Eyes of hatred,
+eyes that repudiated and betrayed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The third night; the third dream.
+
+She had lost John and was looking for him; walking a long time through a
+country she could no longer see or remember. She came out of blank space
+to the river bridge and the red town. She could see the road
+switchbacking over the bridge and turning sharp and slanting up the river
+bank to the ramparts.
+
+Red fortresses above the ramparts, a high red town above the fortresses,
+a thin red tower above the town. The whole thing looked dangerous and
+unsteady, as if any minute it would topple over. She knew John was there.
+Something awful was happening to him, and he wanted her.
+
+When she stepped on the bridge the river swelled and humped itself up to
+the arch. It flooded. The bridge walls made a channel for the gush. It
+curled over the bank and came curving down the slant road from the
+ramparts, heavy and clear, like melted glass.
+
+She climbed up and up through the water and round behind the fortress to
+the street at the top. She could see the thin tower break and lean
+forward like a red crane above the houses. She had to get to the top
+before the street fell down. John was shut up in the last house. She ran
+under the tower as it fell.
+
+The house stood still, straight and tall. John was lying in the dark room
+behind the closed shutters. He wanted her. She could hear him calling to
+her "Jeanne! Jeanne!" She couldn't see in. She couldn't open the door.
+
+"Jeanne!"
+
+The wall split off and leaned forward.
+
+She woke suddenly to the tapping and splashing of the rain.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Feeding time and milking time were done; in his jutting room over the
+door-place John was washing and dressing for Sunday evening. He called
+out to her through his window, "Go up to our seat and wait for me there."
+
+He had come back again, suddenly, that morning, a day before they had
+expected him.
+
+Charlotte came out of the hot field into the cool room of the beech ring.
+She sniffed up the clean, sharp smell of sap from the rough seat that she
+and John had put up there, sawing and hacking and hammering all Sunday
+afternoon. Every evening when the farm work was done they would sit there
+together, inside the round screen of the beeches.
+
+The farm people wouldn't disturb them; not even Mr. Burton, now, looking
+in, smiling the fat, benevolent smile that blessed them, and going away;
+the very calves were so well used to them that they had left off pushing
+their noses through the tree trunks and staring.
+
+John's window faced her where she sat; she could see his head passing and
+passing across the black window space. To her sharp, waiting soul Barrow
+Farm took on a sudden poignant and foreign beauty. The house was yellow
+where the rain had soaked it, gold yellow like a sun-struck southern
+house, under the black plume of the firs, a yellow that made the sky's
+blue solid and thick. The grass, bright green after the rain, stretched
+with the tight smoothness of velvet over the slopes and ridges of the
+field. A stripe of darker green, where their feet had trodden down the
+blades, led straight as a sheep's track from the garden gate to the
+opening of the ring.
+
+To think that she had dreamed bad dreams in a place like this. She
+thought: "There must be something wrong about me, anyhow, to dream bad
+dreams about John."
+
+John was coming up the field, walking slowly, his hands thrust in his
+pockets, his eyes fixed steadily on a point in front of him that his mind
+didn't see, drawn back in some intense contemplation. He strolled into
+the ring so slowly that she had time to note the meditative gestures of
+his shoulders and chin. He stood beside her, very straight and tall, not
+speaking, still hiding his hands in his pockets, keeping up to the last
+minute his pose of indestructible tranquillity. He was so close that she
+could hear his breathing and feel his coat brushing her shoulder.
+
+He seated himself, slowly, without a break in the silence of his
+meditation.
+
+She knew that something wonderful and beautiful was going to happen. It
+had happened; it was happening now, growing more certain and more real
+with every minute that she waited for John to say something. If nothing
+changed, if this minute that she was living now prolonged itself, if it
+went on for ever and ever, that would be happiness enough.
+
+If she could keep still like this for ever--Any movement would be
+dangerous. She was afraid almost to breathe.
+
+Then she remembered. Of course, she would have to _tell_ him.
+
+She could feel the jerk and throb in John's breathing, measuring off the
+moments of his silence. Her thoughts came and went. "When he says he
+cares for me I shall have to tell him"--"This is going on for ever. If he
+cared for me he would have said it before now."--"It doesn't matter. He
+can care or not as he likes. Nothing can stop my caring."
+
+Then she was aware of her will, breaking through her peace, going out
+towards him, fastening on his mind to make him care; to make him say he
+cared, now, this minute. She was aware of her hands, clenched and
+unclenched, pressing the sharp edge of the seat into their palms as she
+dragged back her will.
+
+She was quiet now.
+
+John was looking at his own loose clasped hands and smiling. "Yes," he
+said, "yes. Yes." It was as if he had said, "This will go on. Nothing
+more than this can ever happen. But as long as we live it will go on."
+
+She had a sense almost of relief.
+
+"Charlotte--"
+
+"John--"
+
+"You asked me why I came here. You must have known why."
+
+"I didn't. I don't."
+
+"Can't you think?"
+
+"No, John. I've left off thinking. _My_ thinking's never any use."
+
+"If you _did_ think you'd know it was you."
+
+"_Me_?"
+
+"If it wasn't you just at first it was your face. There are faces that do
+things to you, that hurt you when they're not there. Faces of people you
+don't know in the least. You see them once and they never let you alone
+till you've seen them again. They draw you after them, back and back.
+You'd commit any sin just to see them again once....
+
+"... You've got that sort of face. When I saw you the first time--Do
+you remember? You came towards me over the field. You stopped and
+spoke to me."
+
+"Supposing I hadn't?"
+
+"It wouldn't have mattered. I'd have followed you just the same. Wherever
+you'd gone I'd have gone, too. I very nearly turned back then."
+
+She remembered. She saw him standing in the road at the turn.
+
+"I knew I had to see you again. But I waited two days to make sure. Then
+I came ...
+
+"... And when I'd gone I kept on seeing your face. It made me come back
+again. And the other day--I tried to get away from you. I didn't mean to
+come back; but I had to. I can't stand being away from you. And yet--
+
+"... Oh well--there it is. I had to tell you ... I couldn't if I didn't
+trust you."
+
+"You tried to get away from me--You didn't mean to come back."
+
+"I tell you I _had_ to. It's no use trying."
+
+"But you didn't want to come back.... _That's_ why I dreamed about you."
+
+"Did you dream about me?"
+
+"Yes. Furiously. Three nights running. I dreamed you'd got away and when
+I'd found you a black thing came down and cut you off. I dreamed you'd
+got away again, and I met you in a foreign village with a lot of foreign
+women, and you looked at me and I knew you hated me. You wouldn't know
+me. You went by without speaking and left me there."
+
+"My God--you thought I could do that?"
+
+"I dreamed it. You don't think in dreams. You feel. You see things."
+
+"You see things that don't exist, that never can exist, things you've
+thought about people. If I thought that about myself, Jeanne, I'd blow my
+brains out now, so that it shouldn't happen."
+
+"That wasn't the worst dream. The third was the worst. You were in a
+dreadful, dangerous place. Something awful was happening, and you wanted
+me, and I couldn't get to you."
+
+"No, that wasn't the worst dream. I _did_ want you, and you knew it."
+
+She thought: "He cares. He doesn't want to care, but he does. And he
+trusts me. I shall have to tell him ..."
+
+"There's something," she said, "I've got to tell you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He must have known. He must have guessed.
+
+He had listened with a gentle, mute attention, as you listen to a story
+about something that you remember, that interests you still, his eyes
+fixed on his own hands, his clear, beautiful face dreamy and inert.
+
+"You see," he said, "you did trust me. You wouldn't tell me all that if
+you didn't."
+
+"Of course I trust you. I told you because you trusted me. I thought--I
+thought you ought to know. I daresay you did know--all the time."
+
+"No. No, I didn't. I shouldn't have believed it was in you."
+
+"It isn't in me now. It's gone clean out of me. I shall never want that
+sort of thing again."
+
+"I know _that_." He said it almost irritably. "I mean I shouldn't have
+thought you could have cared for a brute like that.... But the brutes
+women _do_ care for ..."
+
+"I suppose I did care. But I don't feel as if I'd cared. I don't feel as
+if it had ever really happened. I can't believe it did. You see, I've
+forgotten such a lot of it. I couldn't have believed that once, that you
+could go and do a thing like that and forget about it. You'd have thought
+you'd remember it as long as you lived."
+
+"You couldn't live if you remembered...."
+
+"Oh, John, do you think it was as horrible as all that?"
+
+His face moved, flashed into sudden passion.
+
+"I think _he_ was as horrible as that. He makes it
+horrible--inconceivably horrible."
+
+"But--he wasn't."
+
+"You've told me. He was cruel to you. And he lied and funked."
+
+"It wasn't like him--it wasn't _like_ him to lie and funk. It was my
+fault. I made the poor thing jumpy. I let him run such whopping risks.
+_The_ horrible thing is thinking what I made him."
+
+"He was a liar and a coward, Charlotte; a swine."
+
+"I tell you he _wasn't_. Oh, why are we so beastly hard on each other?
+Everybody's got their breaking-point. I don't lie about the things he
+lied about; I don't funk the things he funked. But when my time comes I
+daresay I shall funk and lie."
+
+"Charlotte--are you sure you don't care for him?"
+
+"Of course I'm sure. I told you I'd forgotten all about it. _This_ is
+what I shall remember all my life. Your being here, my being with you.
+It's the _real_ thing."
+
+"You wouldn't want to go back?"
+
+"To him?"
+
+"No. To that sort of thing."
+
+"You mean with--just anybody?"
+
+"I mean with--somebody you cared about. Could you do without it and go
+on caring?"
+
+"Yes. If _he_ could. If he could go on. But he wouldn't."
+
+"'He' wouldn't, Charlotte. But _I_ would.... You know I _do_ care for
+you?"
+
+"I thought you _did_--I mean I thought you were beginning to. That's why
+I told you what happened, though I knew you'd loathe me."
+
+"I don't. I'm glad you told me. I'm glad it happened. I mean I'm glad
+you worked it off on him.... You got it over; you've had your
+experience; you know all about it; you know how long that sort of thing
+lasts and how it ends. The baseness, the cruelty of it ... I'm like you,
+Charlotte, I don't want any more of it.... When I say I care for you I
+mean I want to be with you, to be with you _always_. I'm not happy when
+you're not there....
+
+"... I say, I wish you'd leave this place and come away and live with me
+somewhere."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"There's my farm. My father's going to give me one if I stick to
+this job. We could run it together. There are all sorts of jolly
+things we could do together.... Would you like to live with me,
+Charlotte, on my farm?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I mean--live with me without _that_."
+
+"Yes; without that."
+
+"It isn't that I don't care for you. It's because I care so awfully, so
+much more than anybody else could. I want to go on caring, and it's the
+only way. People don't know that. They don't know what they're
+destroying with their blind rushing together. All the delicate,
+exquisite sensations. Charlotte, I can get all the ecstasy I want by
+just sitting here and looking at you, hearing your voice, touching
+you--like this." His finger-tips brushed the bare skin of her arm. "Even
+thinking of you ...
+
+"... And all that would go. Everything would go....
+
+"... But our way--nothing could end it."
+
+"I can see one thing that would end it. If you found somebody you really
+cared about."
+
+"Oh _that_--You mean if I--It wouldn't happen, and if it did, what
+difference would it make?"
+
+"You mean you'd come back?"
+
+"I mean I shouldn't have left you."
+
+"Still, you'd have gone to her. John, I don't think I could bear it."
+
+"You wouldn't have to bear it long. It wouldn't last."
+
+"Why shouldn't it?"
+
+"Because--You don't understand, Charlotte--if I know a woman wants me, it
+makes me loathe her."
+
+"It wouldn't, if you wanted _her_."
+
+"That would be worse. I should _hate_ her then if she made me go to her."
+
+"You don't know."
+
+"Oh, don't I!"
+
+"You can't, if you feel like that about it."
+
+"You say you feel like that about it yourself."
+
+"That's because I've been through it."
+
+"Do you suppose," he said, "I haven't?"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+JOHN RODEN CONWAY
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+It was an hour since they had left Newhaven.
+
+The boat went steadily, inflexibly, without agitation, cutting the small,
+crisp waves with a sound like the flowing of stiff silk. For a moment,
+after the excited rushing and hooting of the ambulance car, there had
+been something not quite real about this motion, till suddenly you caught
+the rhythm, the immense throb and tremor of the engines.
+
+Then she knew.
+
+She was going out, with John and Gwinnie Denning and a man called Sutton,
+Dr. Sutton, to Belgium, to the War. She wondered whether any of them
+really knew what it would be like when they got there.--She was vague,
+herself. She thought of the war mostly in two pictures: one very distant,
+hanging in the air to her right, colourless as an illustration in the
+papers, grey figures tumbled in a grey field, white puff-bursts of
+shrapnel in a grey sky: and one very near; long lines of stretchers,
+wounded men and dead men on stretchers, passing and passing before her.
+She saw herself and John carrying a stretcher, John at the head and her
+at the foot and Gwinnie and Dr. Sutton with another stretcher.
+
+Nothing for her and John and Gwinnie but field work; the farm had spoiled
+them incurably for life indoors. But it had hardened their muscles and
+their nerves, it had fitted them for the things they would have to do.
+The things they would have to see. There would be blood; she knew there
+would be blood; but she didn't see it; she saw white, very white
+bandages, and greyish white, sallow-white faces that had no features that
+she knew. She hadn't really thought so very much about the war; there had
+been too many other things to think about. Their seven weeks' training at
+Coventry, the long days in Roden and Conway's motor works, the long
+evenings in the ambulance classes; field practice in the meadow that
+John's father had lent to the Red Cross; runs along the Warwickshire
+roads with John sitting beside her, teaching her to steer and handle the
+heavy ambulance car. An endless preparation.
+
+And under it all, like a passion, like a hidden illness, their
+impatience, their intolerable longing to be out there.
+
+If there had been nothing else to think about there was John. Always
+John. Not that you could think about him without thinking about the war;
+he was so thoroughly mixed up with it; you couldn't conceive him as left
+out of it or as leaving himself out. It had been an obsession with him,
+to get into it, to get into it at once, without waiting. That was why
+there was only four of them. He wouldn't wait for more volunteers. They
+could get all the volunteers they wanted afterwards; and all the cars,
+his father would send out any number. She suspected John of not really
+wanting the volunteers, of not even wanting Gwinnie and Dr. Sutton. She
+could see he would have liked to have gone with her alone. Queer, that so
+long as she had thought he would be going without her, she had been
+afraid; she had felt certain he would be killed or die of wounds. The one
+unbearable thing was that John should die. But after it had been settled
+that she was to go with him as his chauffeur she hadn't been afraid any
+more. It was as if she knew that she would keep him safe. Or perhaps all
+the time she had been afraid of something else. Of separation. She had
+had visions of John without her in another country; they were coloured,
+vaguely, with the horror of her dreams. It had been just that. Anyhow,
+she hadn't thought any more about John's dying.
+
+It was the old man, his father, who had made her think of it now.
+
+She could see him, the grey, kind, silent man, at the last minute,
+standing on the quay and looking at John with a queer, tight look as
+though he were sorry about something--oh, but unbearably sorry about
+something he'd thought or said or done. He was keeping it all in, it was
+a thing he couldn't speak about, but you could see it made him think John
+wasn't coming back again.
+
+He had got it into his head that she was going out because of John.
+She remembered, before that, his kind, funny look at her when he said
+to John, "Mind you take care of her," and John's "No fear," and her
+own "That's not what he's going out for." She had a slight pang when
+she thought of John's father. He had been good to Gwinnie and to her
+at Coventry.
+
+But as for going out because of John, whether he went or not she would
+have had to go, so keen that she hated those seven weeks at Coventry,
+although John had been there.
+
+With every thud of the engines her impatience was appeased.
+
+And all the time she could hear Gwinnie's light, cool voice explaining to
+Dr. Sutton that the British Red Cross wouldn't look at them and their
+field ambulance, but the Belgians, poor things, you know, weren't in a
+position to refuse. They would have taken almost anything.
+
+Her mind turned to them: to Gwinnie, dressed in their uniform, khaki
+tunic and breeches and puttees, her fawn-coloured overcoat belted close
+round her to hide her knees. Gwinnie looked stolid and good, with her
+face, the face of an innocent, intelligent routing animal, stuck out
+between the close wings of her motor cap and the turned-up collar of her
+coat. She would go through it all right. Gwinnie was a little plodder.
+
+She would plod through the war as she had plodded through her training,
+without any fear of tests.
+
+And Dr. Sutton. From time to time she caught him looking at her across
+the deck. When Gwinnie's talk dropped he made no effort to revive it, but
+stood brooding; a square, thick-set man. His head leaned forward a little
+from his heavy shoulders in a perpetual short-sighted endeavour to look
+closer; you could see his eyes, large and clear under the watery wash of
+his glasses. His features, slightly flattened, were laid quietly back on
+his composed, candid face; the dab of docked moustache rising up in it
+like a strange note of wonder, of surprise.
+
+There, he was looking at her again. But whether he looked or listened, or
+stood brooding, his face kept still all the time, still and sad. His
+mouth hardly moved as he spoke to Gwinnie.
+
+She turned from him to the contemplation of their fellow passengers. The
+two Belgian boy scouts in capes and tilted caps with tassels bobbing over
+their foreheads; they tramped the decks, seizing attention by their gay,
+excited gestures. You could see that they were happy.
+
+The group, close by her in the stern, establishing itself there apart,
+with an air of righteous possession: five, six, seven men, three young,
+four middle-aged, rather shy and awkward, on its fringe. In its centre
+two women in slender tailor-made suits and motor veils, looking like
+bored uninterested travellers used to the adventure.
+
+They were talking to a little man in shabby tweeds and an olive-green
+velvet hat too small for his head. His smooth, innocent pink face carried
+its moustache like an accident, a mistake. Once, when he turned, she met
+the arched stare of small china-blue eyes; it passed over her without
+seeing, cold, dreamy, indifferent.
+
+She glanced again at his women. The tall one drew you every time by her
+raking eyes, her handsome, arrogant face, the gesture of her small head,
+alert and at the same time set, the predatory poise of an enormous bird.
+But the other one was--rather charming. Her features had a curious, sweet
+bluntness; her eyes were decorations, deep-set blue in the flushed gold
+of her sunburn. The little man straddled as he talked to them, bobbing
+forward now and then, with a queer jerking movement from his hips.
+
+She wondered what they were and decided that they were part of the
+Commission for Relief in Belgium, bound for Ostend.
+
+All those people had the look that John had, of having found what they
+had wanted, of being satisfied, appeased. Even Sutton had it, lying on
+the top of his sadness, like a light. They felt precisely as she was
+feeling--all those people.
+
+And through her wonder she remained aware of John Conway as he walked the
+deck, passing and passing in front of her.
+
+She got up and walked with him.
+
+The two women stared at them as they passed. One, the tall one, whispered
+something to the other.
+
+"John--do my knees show awfully as I walk?"
+
+"No. Of course they don't. Gwinnie's do. She doesn't know what to do
+with them."
+
+He looked down at her and smiled.
+
+"I like you. I like you in that cap. You look as if you were sailing fast
+against a head wind, as if you could cut through anything."
+
+Their turn brought them again under the women's eyes. He took her arm and
+drew her aside to the rail of the boat's stern. They stood there,
+watching the wake boiling and breaking and thinning, a white lace of
+froth on the glassy green. Sutton passed them.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" she said.
+
+"The War. He's got it on his mind. It's no use taking it like that,
+Jeanne, as one consummate tragedy ... How are _you_ feeling about it?"
+
+"I don't think I'm feeling anything--except wanting to get there. And
+wanting--wanting frightfully--to help."
+
+"Unless you can go into it as if it was some tremendous, happy
+adventure--That's the only way to take it. I shouldn't be any good if I
+didn't feel it was the most _romantic_ thing that ever happened to
+me.... To have let everything go, to know that nothing matters, that it
+doesn't matter if you're killed, or mutilated ... Of course I want to
+help, but that would be nothing without the gamble. The danger."
+
+He stopped suddenly in his turning and held her with his shining,
+excited eyes.
+
+"War's the most romantic thing that ever happened ... False romance, my
+father calls it. Jolly little romance about _him_. He'll simply make pots
+of money out of the war, selling motors to the Government."
+
+"It's rather--romantic of him to give us those two ambulances, and
+pay for us."
+
+"_Is_ it? Think of the kudos he gets out of it, and the advertisement for
+Roden and Conway, the stinking paragraphs he'll put in the papers about
+himself: 'His second son, Mr. John Roden Conway, is taking out two Roden
+field ambulance cars which he will drive himself--'Mr. John Roden Conway
+and his field ambulance car. A Roden, 30 horse power.' He makes me sick."
+
+She saw again, with a renewal of her pang, the old man, the poor, kind
+man. Perhaps he wouldn't put the paragraphs in the papers.
+
+"False romance. He lied. There's no such thing as false romance. Romance
+is a state of mind. A state of mind can't be false or true. It simply
+exists. It hasn't any relation to reality. It _is_ reality, the most real
+part of us. When it's dead we're dead."
+
+"Yes."
+
+But it was funny to _talk_ about it. About romance and danger. It made
+her hot and shy. She supposed that was because she couldn't take things
+in. Her fatheadedness. It was easy not to say things if you didn't feel
+them. The more John felt them the more he had to say them. Besides, he
+never said them to anybody but her. It was really saying them to himself,
+a quiet, secret thinking.
+
+He stood close, close in front of her, tall and strong and handsome in
+his tunic, knee breeches and puttees. She could feel the vibration of his
+intense, ardent life, of his excitement. And suddenly, before his young
+manhood, she had it again, the old feeling, shooting up and running over
+her, swamping her brain. She wondered with a sort of terror whether he
+would see it in her face, whether if she spoke he would hear it
+thickening her throat. He would loathe her if he knew. She would loathe
+herself if she thought she was going into the war because of that,
+because of him. Women did. She remembered Gibson Herbert. Glasgow.... But
+this was different. The sea was in it, magic was in it and romance. And
+if she had to choose between John and her wounded it should not be John.
+She had sworn that before they started. Standing there close beside him
+she swore again, secretly to herself, that it should not be John.
+
+John glanced at Sutton as he passed them.
+
+"I'd give my soul to be a surgeon," he said. "That's what I wanted."
+
+"You wanted to be a soldier."
+
+"It would have been the next best thing.... Did you notice in the lists
+the number of Army Medical men killed and missing? Out of all proportion.
+That means that they're as much exposed as the combatants. More,
+really....
+
+"... Jeanne--do you realise that if we've any luck, any luck at all, we
+shall take the same risks?"
+
+"It's all very well for us. If it was only being killed--But
+there's killing."
+
+"Of course there's killing. If a man's willing to be killed he's jolly
+well earned his right to kill. It's the same for the other johnnie. If
+your life doesn't matter a hang, his doesn't either. He's got his
+feeling. He's got his romance. If he hasn't--"
+
+"Yes--if he hasn't?"
+
+"He's better dead."
+
+"Oh no; he might simply go slogging on without feeling anything, from a
+sense of duty. That would be beautiful; it would be _the_ most
+beautiful thing."
+
+"There you are, then. His duty's his romance. You can't get away from
+it."
+
+"No."
+
+But she thought: Supposing he went, loathing it, shivering, sick?
+Frightened. Well, of course it would be there too, simply because he
+_went_; only you would feel it, not he.
+
+Supposing he didn't go, supposing he stuck, and had to be pushed on, by
+bayonets, from behind? It didn't bear thinking of.
+
+John hadn't thought of it. He wouldn't. He couldn't see that some people
+were like that.
+
+"I don't envy," he said, "the chaps who come out to soft jobs in
+this war."
+
+They had found the little man in tweeds asleep behind the engine house,
+his chin sunk on his chest, his hands folded on his stomach. He had taken
+off his green velvet hat, and a crest of greyish hair rose up from his
+bald forehead, light and fine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun was setting now. The foam of the wake had the pink tinge of red
+wine spilt on a white cloth; a highway of gold and rose, edged with
+purple, went straight from it to the sun.
+
+After the sunset, land, the sunk lines of the Flemish coast.
+
+There was a stir among the passengers; they plunged into the cabins and
+presently returned, carrying things. The groups sorted themselves, the
+Commission people standing apart with their air of arrogance and
+distinction. The little man in tweeds had waked up from his sleep behind
+the engine house, and strolled with a sort of dreamy swagger to his place
+at their head. Everybody moved over to the starboard side.
+
+They stood there in silence watching the white walls and domes and towers
+of Ostend. Charlotte and Conway had moved close to each other. She looked
+up into his face, searching his thoughts there. Suddenly from somewhere
+in the bows a song spurted and dropped and spurted again and shot up in
+the stillness, slender and clear, like a rod oft white water. The Belgian
+boys were singing the Marseillaise. On the deck their feet beat out the
+thud of the march.
+
+Charlotte looked away.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+"Nothing," Charlotte said, "is going to be worse than this."
+
+It seemed to her that they had waited hours in the huge grey hall of the
+Hotel-Hospital, she and Sutton and Gwinnie, while John talked to the
+President of the Red Cross in his bureau. Everybody looked at them: the
+door-keeper, the lift orderly; the ward men and nurses hurrying past;
+wide stares and sharp glances falling on her and Gwinnie, slanting
+downward to their breeches and puttees, then darting upwards to their
+English faces.
+
+Sutton moved, putting his broad body between them and the batteries of
+amused and interested eyes.
+
+They stood close together at the foot of the staircase. Above them the
+gigantic Flora leaned forward, holding out her flowers to preoccupied
+people who wouldn't look at her; she smiled foolishly; too stupid to know
+that the Flandria was no longer an hotel but a military hospital.
+
+John came out of the President's bureau. He looked disgusted and
+depressed.
+
+"They can put us up," he said; "but I've got to break it to you that
+we're not the only Field Ambulance in Ghent."
+
+Charlotte said, "Oh, well, we'd no business to suppose we were."
+
+"We've got to share our quarters with the other one.... It calls itself
+the McClane Corps."
+
+"Shall we have to sleep with it?" Sutton said.
+
+"We shall have to have it in our messroom. I believe it's up there now."
+
+"Well, that won't hurt us."
+
+"What'll hurt us is this. It'll be sent out before we are. McClane was
+here hours ago. He's been to Head Quarters."
+
+Sutton's gloom deepened. "How do you know?"
+
+"President says so."
+
+They went, following the matron, up the grey, tessellated stairs; at each
+landing the long, grey corridors were tunnels for the passage of strange
+smells, ether and iodine and carbolic and the faint odour of drains,
+seeking their outlet at the well of the staircase.
+
+On the third floor, at the turn of the corridor, a small vestibule
+between two glass doors led to a room flooded with a blond light from the
+south. Beyond the glass doors, their figures softened by the deep,
+doubled shimmer of the panes, they saw the little man in shabby tweeds,
+the two women, and the seven other men. This, Madame explained, was Dr.
+Donald McClane's Field Ambulance Corps. You could see it had thought it
+was the only one. As they entered they met the swoop of two beautiful,
+indignant eyes, a slow turning and abrupt stiffening of shoulders; the
+movement of the group was palpable, a tremor of hostility and resentment.
+
+It lasted with no abatement while Madame, standing there in her gaunt
+Flemish graciousness, murmured names. "Mrs. Rankin--" Mrs. Rankin nodded
+insolently and turned away. "Miss Bartrum--" Miss Bartrum, the rather
+charming one, bowed, drawing the shadow of grave eyebrows over sweet
+eyes. "Dr. Donald McClane--" As he bowed the Commandant's stare arched up
+at them, then dropped, suddenly innocent, suddenly indifferent.
+
+They looked around. Madame and her graciousness had gone. Nobody made a
+place for them at the two long tables set together in the middle of the
+room. The McClane Corps had spread itself over all the chairs and
+benches, in obstinate possession. They passed out through the open French
+windows on to the balcony.
+
+It looked south over the railway towards the country where they thought
+the fighting must be. They could see the lines where the troop trains
+ran, going northwest and southeast, and the railway station and post
+office all in one long red-brick building that had a flat roof with a
+crenellated parapet. Grass grew on the roof. And beyond the black railway
+lines miles upon miles of flat open country, green fields, rows of
+poplars standing up in them very straight; little woods; here and there a
+low rise bristling and dark with trees. The fighting must be over there.
+Under the balcony the white street ran southeastward, and scouting cars
+and ammunition wagons and long lines of troops were all going that way.
+
+While they talked they remained aware of the others. They could see
+McClane rubbing his hands; they heard his brief laugh that had no
+amusement in it, and his voice saying, "Anyhow, we've got in first."
+
+When they came back into the room they found the tables drawn apart with
+a wide space between. The Belgian orderlies were removing plates and cups
+from one to the other, establishing under the Commandant's directions a
+separate mess. By tea-time two chauffeurs had added themselves to the
+McClane Corps.
+
+Twelve to four. And they would have to live together nobody knew how
+long: as long as the war lasted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, in the bedroom that John shared with Sutton, they sat on
+two beds, discussing their prospects. Gwinnie was voluble.
+
+"They've driven us out of our messroom with their beastliness. We shall
+have to sit in our bedrooms all the time."
+
+"We'd better let the office know we're here," said Sutton, "in case we're
+sent for."
+
+"Anyhow," said Charlotte, "_I'm_ not going to bed."
+
+John smiled. A struggling, dejected smile.
+
+"My dear child, I've told you they're not going to send us out first."
+
+"I don't know--" said Gwinnie.
+
+"I _do_ know. We shall be lucky if we get a look in when McClane's cars
+break down."
+
+"That's it. Have you seen their cars? I overhauled them this morning, in
+the yard. They're nothing but old lorries, converted. And one of 'em's
+got solid tyres."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well--You wait."
+
+They waited. Even the McClane Corps had to wait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I don't care," said Charlotte, "how beastly they are to me, provided
+they leave John alone."
+
+"What can they do?" he said. "They don't matter."
+
+"There's such a lot of them," said Gwinnie. "It's when they're all
+together they're so poisonous."
+
+"It's when they're _separate_," Charlotte said. "I think Mrs. Rankin
+_does_ things. And there's McClane swearing he'll get us out of Belgium.
+But he won't!"
+
+She didn't care. She had got used to it as she had got used to the
+messroom and its furnishings, the basket chairs and backless benches, the
+two long tables covered with white marbled American leather, the
+photographs of the King and Queen of the Belgians above the chimney
+piece. The atmosphere of hostility was thick and penetrating, something
+that you breathed in with the smells of ether and iodine and
+disinfectant, that hung about the grey, leeking corridors and floated in
+the blond light of the room. She could feel a secret threat in it, as if
+at any minute it might work up to some pitch still more malignant, some
+supreme disaster. There were moments when she wondered whether McClane
+had prejudiced the authorities against them. At first she had regarded
+the little man as negligible; it was the women who had fascinated her, as
+if they had or might come to have for her some profound importance and
+significance. She didn't like McClane. He straddled too much. But you
+couldn't go on ignoring him. His dreamy, innocent full face with its
+arching eyes was a mask, the mask of dangerous, inimical intentions; his
+profile was rough cut, brutal, energetic, you guessed the upper lip thin
+and hard under the hanging moustache; the lower one stuck out like a
+sucker. That was his real face. It showed an adhesive, exhausting will
+that squeezed and sucked till it had got what it wanted out of people. He
+could work things. So could Mrs. Rankin. She had dined with the Colonel.
+
+Charlotte didn't care. She _liked_ that beastliness, that hostility of
+theirs. It was something you could put your back against; it braced her
+to defiance. It brought her closer to John, to John and Gwinnie, and
+shut them in together more securely. Sutton she was not quite so sure
+about. Through all their depression he seemed to stand apart somehow by
+himself in a profounder discontent. "There are only four of us," he
+said; "we can't call ourselves a corps." You could see the way his mind
+was working.
+
+Then suddenly the atmosphere lifted at one point. Mrs. Rankin changed her
+attitude to John. You could see her beautiful hawk's eyes pursuing him
+about the room. When she found him in the corridors or on the stairs she
+stopped him and chattered; under her breath because of the hushed wards.
+
+He told Charlotte about it.
+
+"That Mrs. Rankin seems inclined to be a bit too friendly."
+
+"I haven't noticed it."
+
+"Not with you. With Sutton and--and me."
+
+"Well--"
+
+"Well, I can't answer for Sutton, but I don't like it. That isn't what
+we're out here for."
+
+They were going into the messroom together towards dinner time. Mrs.
+Rankin and Alice Bartrum were there alone, seated at their tables, ready.
+Mrs. Rankin called out in her stressed, vibrating voice across the room:
+
+"Mr. _Conway_, you people ought to come in with us."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"_Because_ there are only four of you and we're twelve. Sixteen's the
+proper number for a unit. Alice, didn't I say, the minute I saw Mr.
+Conway with that car of his, didn't I _say_ we ought to have him?"
+
+"You did."
+
+"Thanks. I'd rather take my orders from the Colonel."
+
+"And _I'd_ rather take _mine_ from you than from McClane. Fancy coming
+out at the head of a Field Ambulance looking like that. Tell you what,
+Mr. Conway, if you'll join up with us I'll get the Colonel to make you
+our commandant."
+
+Alice Bartrum opened her shadowed eyes. "Trixie--you _can't_."
+
+"Can't I? I can make the old boy do anything I like."
+
+John stiffened. "You can't make me do anything you like, Mrs. Rankin.
+You'd much better stick to McClane."
+
+"What do any of us know about McClane?"
+
+"What do you know about me?"
+
+You could see how he hated her.
+
+"I know you mean business."
+
+"Doesn't he?"
+
+"Don't ask me what he _means_."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders violently. "Come over here and sit by me. I
+want to talk to you. Seriously."
+
+She had shifted her seat and made a place for him beside her on the
+bench. Her flushed, handsome face covered him with its smile. You could
+see she was used to being obeyed when she smiled like that; when she sent
+that light out of her eyes men did what she wanted. All her life the men
+she knew had obeyed her, all except McClane. She didn't know John.
+
+He raised his head and looked at her with cool, concentrated dislike.
+
+"I'd rather stay where I am if you don't mind. I want to talk to
+Miss Redhead."
+
+"Oh--" Mrs. Rankin's flush went out like a blown flame. Her lips made
+one pale, tight thread above the set square of her chin. All her light
+was in her eyes. They stared before her at the glass door where McClane
+was entering.
+
+He came swaggering and slipped into his place between her and Alice
+Bartrum with his air of not seeing Mrs. Rankin, of not seeing Charlotte
+and John, of not seeing anything he didn't want to see. Presently he
+bobbed round in his seat so as to see Sutton, and began talking to him
+excitedly.
+
+At the end of it Charlotte and Sutton found themselves alone, smiling
+into each other's faces.
+
+"Do you like him?" she said.
+
+"I'm not sure. All the same that isn't a bad idea of Mrs. Rankin's."
+
+It was Sutton who tried to work it the next morning, sounding McClane.
+
+Charlotte was in the space between the glass doors, arranging their
+stores in their own cupboard. McClane's stores had overflowed into it on
+the lower shelves. She could hear the two men talking in the room,
+Sutton's low, persuasive voice; she couldn't hear what he was saying.
+
+Suddenly McClane brought his fist down on the table.
+
+"I'll take you. And I'll take your women. And I'll take your ambulances.
+I could do with two more ambulances. But I won't take Conway."
+
+"You can't tell him that."
+
+"Can't I!"
+
+"What can you say?"
+
+"I can say--"
+
+She pushed open the glass door and went in. McClane was whispering
+furtively. She saw Sutton stop him with a look. They turned to her and
+Sutton spoke.
+
+"Come in, Miss Redhead. This concerns you. Dr. McClane wants you and Miss
+Denning and me to join his corps."
+
+"And how about Mr. Conway?"
+
+"Well--" McClane was trying to look innocent. "Mr. Conway's just the
+difficulty. There can't be two commandants in one corps and he says he
+won't take orders from me."
+
+(Mrs. Rankin must have talked about it, then.)
+
+"Is that what you told Dr. Sutton?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His cold, innocent blue eyes supported him. He was lying; she knew he was
+lying; that was not what he had said when he had whispered.
+
+"You don't suppose," she said, "I should leave Mr. Conway? And if I stick
+to him Gwinnie'll stick."
+
+"And Dr. Sutton?"
+
+"He can please himself."
+
+"If Miss Redhead stays I shall stay."
+
+"John will let you off like a shot, if you don't want to."
+
+She turned to go and McClane called after her, "My offer remains open to
+you three."
+
+Through the glass door she heard Sutton saying, "If you're right,
+McClane, I can't very well leave her with him, can I?"
+
+Sutton was stupid. He didn't understand. Lying on her bed that night
+Charlotte made it out.
+
+"Gwinnie--you know why McClane won't have John?"
+
+"I suppose because Mrs. Rankin's keen on him."
+
+"McClane isn't keen on Mrs. Rankin.... Can't you see he's trying to hoof
+John out of Belgium, because he wants all the glory to himself? We
+wouldn't do that to one of them, even if we were mean enough not to want
+them in it."
+
+"He wanted Sutton."
+
+"Oh, Sutton--He wasn't afraid of _him_.... When you think of the war--and
+think of people being like that. Jealous. Hating each other--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You mightn't like Mrs. Rankin, Mrs. Rankin and McClane; but you couldn't
+say they weren't splendid.
+
+Five days had passed. On the third day the McClane Corps had been sent
+out. (Mrs. Rankin had not dined with the Colonel for nothing.)
+
+It went again and again. By the fifth day they knew that it had
+distinguished itself at Alost and Termonde and Quatrecht. The names
+sounded in their brains like a song with an exciting, maddening refrain.
+October stretched before them, golden and blank, a volume of tense,
+vibrating time.
+
+Nothing for it but to wait and wait. The summons might come any minute.
+Charlotte and Gwinnie had begun by sitting on their drivers' seats in the
+ambulances standing in the yard, ready to start the very instant it came.
+Their orders were to hold themselves in readiness. They held themselves
+in readiness and saw McClane's cars swing out from the rubbered sweep in
+front of the Hospital three and four times a day. They stood on their
+balcony and watched them rush along the road that led to the battlefields
+southeast of the city. The sight of the flat Flemish land and the sadness
+of lovely days oppressed them. She felt that it must be partly that. The
+incredible loveliness of the days. They sat brooding over the map of
+Belgium, marking down the names of the places, Alost, Termonde and
+Quatrecht, that McClane had gone to, that he would talk about on his
+return, when an awful interest would impel them to listen. He and Mrs.
+Rankin would come in about tea-time, swaggering and excited, telling
+everybody that they had been in the line of fire; and Alice Bartrum would
+move about the room, quiet and sweet, cutting bread and butter and
+pretending to be unconcerned in the narration. And in the evening, after
+dinner, the discussion went on and on in John's bedroom. He raged against
+his infernal luck. If they thought he was going to take it lying down--
+
+"McClane can keep me out of my messroom, but he can't keep me out of my
+job. There's room in 'the line of fire' for both of us."
+
+"How are you going to get into it?" said Sutton.
+
+"Same way as McClane. If he can go to Head Quarters, so can I."
+
+"I wouldn't," Sutton said. "It might give a bad impression. Our turn'll
+come before long."
+
+Gwinnie laughed. "It won't--unless Charlotte dines with the Colonel."
+
+"It certainly _mayn't_," said Charlotte. "They may commandeer our cars
+and give them to McClane."
+
+"They can't," said Gwinnie. "We're volunteers."
+
+"They can do anything they choose. Military necessity."
+
+Gwinnie was thoughtful.
+
+"John," she said, "can I have one of the cars to-morrow afternoon?"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Never mind. Can I?"
+
+"You can have both the damned things if you like; they're no good to me."
+
+The next afternoon they looked on while Gwinnie, who wore a look of great
+wisdom and mystery, slipped her car out of the yard into a side street
+and headed for the town. She came back at tea-time, bright-eyed and
+faintly flushed.
+
+"You'll find we shall be sent out to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, shall we!" John said.
+
+"Yes. I've worked it for you."
+
+"You?"
+
+"Me. They've seen my car."
+
+"Who have?"
+
+"The whole lot of them. General Staff. First of all I paraded it all
+round the blessed town. Then I turned into the Place d'Armes. I kept it
+standing two solid hours outside the Hotel de la Poste where the blooming
+brass hats all hang out. In five minutes it collected a small crowd.
+First it was only refugees and war correspondents. Then the Colonel came
+out and stuck his head in at the back. He got quite excited when he saw
+we could take five stretcher cases.
+
+"I showed him our tyres and the electric light, and I ran the stretchers
+in and out for him. He'd never seen them with wheels before.... He said
+it was 'magnifique'... The old bird wanted to take me into the hotel and
+stand me tea."
+
+"Didn't you let him?"
+
+"No. I said I had to stay with my car. And I took jolly good care to let
+him know it hadn't been out yet."
+
+"Whatever made you think of it?"
+
+"I don't know. It just sort of came to me."
+
+Next afternoon John had orders to go to Berlaere to fetch wounded.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+At the turn of the road they heard the guns: a solemn Boom--Boom coming
+up out of hushed spaces; they saw white puffs of smoke rising in the blue
+sky. The French guns somewhere back of them. The German guns in front
+southwards beyond the river.
+
+Charlotte looked at John; he was brilliantly happy. They smiled at each
+other as if they said "_Now_ it's beginning."
+
+Outside the village of Berlaere they were held up by two sentries with
+rifles. (Thrilling, that.) Their Belgian guide leaned out and whispered
+the password; John showed their passports and they slipped through.
+
+Where the road turned on their left into the street they saw a group of
+soldiers standing at the door of a house. Three of them, a Belgian
+lieutenant and two non-commissioned officers, advanced hurriedly and
+stopped the car. The lieutenant forbade them to go on.
+
+"But," John said, "we've got orders to go on."
+
+A shrug intimated that their orders were not the lieutenant's affair.
+They couldn't go on.
+
+"But we _must_ go on. We've got to fetch some wounded."
+
+"There aren't any wounded," said the lieutenant.
+
+Charlotte had an inspiration. "You tell us that tale every time," she
+said, "and there are always wounded."
+
+The Belgian guide and the lieutenant exchanged glances.
+
+"I've told you there aren't any," the lieutenant said. "You must go
+back."
+
+"Here--You explain."
+
+But instead of explaining the little Belgian backed up the lieutenant by
+a refusal on his own part to go on.
+
+"He can please himself. _We're_ going on."
+
+"You don't imagine," Charlotte said, "by any chance that we're _afraid_?"
+
+The lieutenant smiled, a smile that lifted his ferocious, upturned
+moustache: first sign that he was yielding. He looked at the sergeant and
+the corporal, and they nodded.
+
+John had his foot on the clutch. "We're due," he said, "at the dressing
+station by three o'clock."
+
+She thought: He's magnificent. She could see that the lieutenant and the
+soldiers thought he was magnificent. Supposing she had gone out with some
+meek fool who would have gone back when they told him!
+
+The lieutenant skipped aside before the advancing car. "You can go," he
+said, "to the dressing-station."
+
+"They always do that as a matter of form--sort of warning us that it's
+our own risk. They won't be responsible."
+
+She didn't answer. She was thinking that when they turned John's driving
+place would be towards the German guns.
+
+"I wish you'd let me drive. You know I like driving."
+
+"Not this time."
+
+At the dressing-station, a deserted store, they found a Belgian Army
+Medical officer engaged with a tired and flushed and dirty soldier. He
+was bandaging his left hand which had made a trail of blood splashes from
+the street to the counter. The right hand hung straight down from a nick
+in the dropped wrist where a tendon had been severed. He told them that
+they had grasped the situation. Seven men waited there for transport.
+
+The best thing--perhaps--He looked doubtfully at Charlotte--would be for
+them to take these men back at once. (The tired soldier murmured
+something: a protest or an entreaty.) Though they were not exactly urgent
+cases. They could wait.
+
+Charlotte suspected a serious reservation. "You mean you have others
+more urgent?"
+
+The soldier got in his word. "Much more." His lips and eyes moved
+excitedly in the flush and grime.
+
+"Well yes," the doctor admitted that they had. Not in the village, but in
+a hamlet about a mile outside of it. An outpost. This man and three
+others had been holding it with two machine guns. He had had a finger
+shot away and his wrist cut open by a shell-burst; the other three were
+left there, badly wounded.
+
+"All right, we'll go and fetch them."
+
+"Monsieur, the place is being shelled. You have no orders."
+
+"We've no orders not to."
+
+The doctor spread out helpless palms, palms that disclaimed
+responsibility.
+
+"If you go, you go at your own risk. I will not send you."
+
+"That's all right."
+
+"Oh well--But certainly Mademoiselle must be left behind."
+
+"Mademoiselle is much too useful."
+
+Frantic gestures of eyebrows and palms.
+
+"You must not stay there more than three minutes. _Three minutes_."
+
+He turned to the cut tendon with an air of integrity, his conscience
+appeased by laying down this time limit.
+
+John released the clutch, and the soldier shouted out something, they
+couldn't make out what, that ended with "mitrailleuses."
+
+As they ran down the street the solemn Boom--Boom came right and left;
+they were now straight between the two batteries.
+
+"Are you all right, Sharlie?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+The little Belgian by her side muttered, protesting.
+
+"We're not really in any danger. It's all going on over our heads."
+
+"Do you suppose," she said, "they'll get our range?"
+
+"Rather not. Why should they? They've got their range and they'll
+stick to it."
+
+The firing on their right ceased.
+
+"They're quiet enough now," she said.
+
+The little Belgian informed her that if they were quiet so much the
+worse. They were finding their range.
+
+She thought: We were safe enough before, but--
+
+"Supposing," she said, "they alter their range?"
+
+"They won't alter it just for the fun of killing us. They haven't
+spotted the batteries yet. It's the batteries they're trying for, not
+the street."
+
+But the little Belgian went on protesting.
+
+"What's the matter with him?"
+
+"He's getting a bit jumpy," she said, "that's all."
+
+"Tell him to buck up. Tell him it's all right."
+
+She translated. The little Belgian shook his head, mournfully persistent.
+"Monsieur," he said, "didn't know."
+
+"Oh yes, he does know."
+
+It was absurd of the little man to suppose you didn't know, when
+the noise of the French guns told them how near they were to the
+enemy's target.
+
+She tried not to listen to him. His mutterings broke up the queer
+stillness that held her after she had heard the guns. It was only by
+keeping still that you felt, wave by wave, the rising thrill of the
+adventure. Only by keeping still she was aware of what was passing in
+John's mind. He knew. He knew. They were one in the almost palpable
+excitement that they shared; locked close, closer than their bodies could
+have joined them, in the strange and poignant ecstasy of danger.
+
+There was the sound of an explosion somewhere in front of them beyond
+the houses.
+
+"Did you hear that, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Miles away," said John.
+
+She knew it wasn't. She thought: He doesn't want me to know. He thinks
+I'll be frightened. I mustn't tell him.
+
+But the Belgian had none of John's scruples. The shell was near, he said;
+very near. It had fallen in the place they were going to.
+
+"But that's the place where the wounded men are."
+
+He admitted that it was the place where the wounded men were.
+
+They were out of the village now. Their road ran through flat open
+country, a causeway raised a little above the level of the fields. No
+cover anywhere from the fire if it came. The Belgian had begun again.
+
+"What's that he's saying now?"
+
+"He says we shall give away the position of the road."
+
+"It's the one they told us to take. We've got to go on it. He's in a
+beastly funk. That's what's the matter with him."
+
+The Belgian shrugged his shoulders as much as to say he had done his duty
+and things might now take their course, and they were mistaken if for one
+minute they supposed he was afraid. But they had not gone fifty yards
+before he begged to be put down. He said it was absolutely necessary that
+he should go back to the village and collect the wounded there and have
+them ready for the ambulance on its return.
+
+They let him go. Charlotte looked round the corner of the hood and saw
+him running with brief, jerky strides.
+
+"He's got a nerve," said John, "to be able to do it."
+
+"What excuse do you think he'll make?"
+
+"Oh, he'll say we sent him."
+
+The straight dyke of the road went on and on. Seen from the sunk German
+lines the heavy ambulance car would look like a house on wheels running
+along a wall. She thought again of John on his exposed seat. If only he
+had let her drive--But that was absurd. Of course he wouldn't let her. If
+you were to keep on thinking of the things that might happen to
+John--Meanwhile nothing could take from them the delight of this
+dangerous run across the open. She had to remind herself that the
+adventure, the romance of it was not what mattered most; it was not the
+real thing, the thing they had gone out for.
+
+When they came to the wounded, when they came to the wounded, then it
+would begin.
+
+The hamlet began to show now; it sat on one side of the road, low and
+alone in the flat land, an open field in front of it, and at the bottom
+of the field the river and a line of willows, and behind the willows the
+Germans, hidden. White smoke curled among the branches. You could see it
+was an outpost, one of the points at which the Germans, if they broke
+through, would come into the village. They supposed that the house where
+the wounded men were would be the last of the short row.
+
+Here on their right there were no houses, only the long, high flank of a
+barn. The parts that had been built out into the field were shelled away,
+but the outer wall by the roadside still held. It was all that stood
+between them and the German guns. They drew up the car under its shelter
+and got down.
+
+They could see all the houses of the hamlet at once on their left;
+whitewashed walls; slender grey doors and shutters. The three that
+looked out on to the barn were untouched. A few yards ahead a small,
+empty wine-shop faced the open field; its doorstep and the path in front
+of its windows glittered with glass dust, with spikes and splinters, and
+heaped shale of glass that slid and cracked under your feet. Beyond it,
+a house with its door and all its windows and the front slope of its
+roof blown in. A broken shutter sagged from the wall. Then the shell of
+the last house; it pricked up one plastered gable, white and hard
+against the blue.
+
+They found the men in the last house but one, the house with the broken
+shutter. They went, carrying their stretchers and the haversack of
+dressings, under the slanted lintel into the room. The air in there was
+hot and stifling and thickened with a grey powdery swarm. Their feet sank
+through a layer of pinkish, greyish dust.
+
+The three wounded men lay stretched out on this floor, among brickbats
+and broken panes and slabs of dropped plaster. A thin grey powder had
+settled on them all. And by the side of each man the dust was stiffened
+into a red cake with a glairy pool in the middle of it, fed from the raw
+wound; and where two men lay together their pools had joined and
+overflowed in a thin red stream.
+
+John put down his stretcher and stood still. His face was very white, and
+his upper lip showed in-drawn and dry, and tightened as though it were
+glued to his teeth.
+
+"John, you _aren't_ going to faint or be sick or anything?"
+
+"I'm all right."
+
+He went forward, clenching his fists; moving in a curious drawn way, like
+a sleep walker.
+
+They were kneeling in the dust now, looking for the wounds.
+
+"We must do this chap with the arm first. He'll want a tourniquet."
+
+He spoke in a husky whisper as if he were half asleep....
+
+The wounded head stuck to the floor. They scraped round it, digging with
+their hands; it came up wearing a crust of powdered lime. A pad and a
+bandage. They couldn't do anything more for that ... The third man, with
+the fractured shin-bone and the big flesh-wound in his thigh, must have
+splints and a dressing.
+
+She wondered how John would set about his work. But his queer, hypnotised
+actions were effectual and clean.
+
+Between them they had fixed the tourniquet.
+
+Through all her preoccupation and the quick, dexterous movement of her
+hands she could feel her pity tightening her throat: pity that hurt like
+love, that was delicious and exquisite like love. Nothing mattered,
+nothing existed in her mind but the three wounded men. John didn't
+matter. John didn't exist. He was nothing but a pair of hands working
+quickly and dexterously with her own.... She looked up. John's mouth kept
+its hard, glued look; his eyes were feverish behind a glaze of water, and
+red-rimmed.
+
+She thought: It's awful for him. He minds too much. It hurt her to see
+how he minded. After all, he did matter. Deep inside her he mattered more
+than the wounded men; he mattered more than anything on earth. Only there
+wasn't time, there wasn't _time_ to think of him.
+
+She turned to the next man and caught sight of the two machine guns with
+their tilted muzzles standing in the corner of the room by the chimney.
+They must remember to bring away the guns.
+
+John's hypnotic whisper came again. "You might get those splints,
+Charlotte."
+
+As she crossed the road a shell fell in the open field beyond, and burst,
+throwing up a great splash and spray of brown earth. She stiffened
+herself in an abrupt gesture of defiance. Her mind retorted: "You've
+missed, that time. You needn't think I'm going to put myself out for
+_you_." To show that she wasn't putting herself out (in case they should
+be looking) she strolled with dignity to her car, selected carefully the
+kind of splint she needed, and returned. She thought: Oh well--supposing
+they _do_ hit. We must get those men out before another comes.
+
+John looked up as she came to him. His face glistened with pinheads of
+sweat; he panted in the choking air.
+
+"Where did that shell burst?"
+
+"Miles away."
+
+"Are you certain?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+She lied. Why not? John had been lying all the time. Lying was part of
+their defiance, a denial that the enemy's effort had succeeded. Nothing
+mattered but the fixing of the splints and the carrying of the men....
+
+John was cranking up the engine when she turned back into the house.
+
+"I _say_, what are you doing?"
+
+"Going for the guns."
+
+There was, she noticed, a certain longish interval between shells. John
+and the wounded men would be safe from shrapnel under the shelter of the
+wall. She brought out the first gun and stowed it at the back of the car.
+Then she went in for the other. It stood on the seat between them with
+its muzzle pointing down the road. Charlotte put her arm round it to
+steady it.
+
+On the way back to the dressing-station she sat silent, thinking of
+the three wounded men in there, behind, rocked and shaken by the
+jolting of the car on the uneven causeway. John was silent, too,
+absorbed by his steering.
+
+But as they ran into Ghent the romance of it, the romance of it, came
+back to her. It wasn't over yet. They would have to go out again for the
+wounded they had had to leave behind at Berlaere.
+
+"John--John--It's like nothing else on earth."
+
+"I told you it would be."
+
+Slowly realization came to her. They had brought in their wounded under
+the enemy's fire. And they had saved the guns.
+
+      *       * * * *
+
+"Do you mind," John said, "if Sutton goes instead of me He hasn't
+been out yet?"
+
+"N-no. Not if I can go too."
+
+"Do you want to?"
+
+"Awfully."
+
+She had drawn up the ambulance in the Square before the Hospital and sat
+in her driver's seat, waiting. Sutton came to her there. When he saw her
+he stood still.
+
+"_You_ going?"
+
+"Rather. Do you mind?"
+
+Sutton didn't answer. All the way out to Berlaere he sat stolid and
+silent, not looking at anything they passed and taking no more notice of
+the firing than if he hadn't heard it. As the car swung into Berlaere she
+was aware of his voice, low under the noise of the engine.
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Conway told me it was you who saved the guns."
+
+Suddenly she was humbled.
+
+"It was the men who saved them. We just brought them away."
+
+"Conway told me what you did," he said quietly.
+
+Going out with Sutton was a quiet affair.
+
+"You know," he said presently, "it was against the Hague Convention."
+
+"Good heavens, so it was! I never thought of it."
+
+"You must think of it. You gave the Germans the right to fire on all our
+ambulances.... You see, this isn't just a romantic adventure; it's a
+disagreeable, necessary, rather dangerous job."
+
+"I didn't do it for swank. I knew the guns were wanted, and I couldn't
+bear to leave them."
+
+"I know, it would have been splendid if you'd been a combatant. But," he
+said sadly, "this is a field ambulance, not an armoured car."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+She was glad they had been sent out with the McClane Corps to Melle. She
+wanted McClane to see the stuff that John was made of. She knew what had
+been going on in the commandant's mind. He had been trying to persuade
+himself that John was no good, because, from the minute he had seen him
+with his ambulance on the wharf at Ostend, from the minute he had known
+his destination, he had been jealous of him and afraid. Why, he must have
+raced them all the way from Ostend, to get in first. Afraid and jealous,
+afraid of John's youth with its secret of triumph and of courage; jealous
+of John's face and body that men and women turned back to look at as they
+passed; even the soldiers going up to the battlefields, going up to
+wounds and death, turned to look at this creature of superb and brilliant
+life. Even on the boat he must have had a dreadful wonder whether John
+was bound for Ghent; he must have known from the beginning that wherever
+Conway placed himself he would stand out and make other men look small
+and insignificant. If he wasn't jealous and afraid of Sutton she supposed
+it was because John had had that rather diminishing effect on poor Billy.
+
+If Billy Sutton distinguished himself that would open McClane's eyes a
+little wider, too.
+
+She wondered why Billy kept on saying that McClane was a great
+psychologist. If it was true that would be very awful for McClane; he
+would see everything going on inside people, then, all the things he
+didn't want to see; he wouldn't miss anything, and he would know all the
+time what John was like. The little man was wilfully shutting his eyes
+because he was so mean that he couldn't bear to see John as he really
+was. Now he would have to see.
+
+The thought of McClane's illumination consoled her for her own inferior
+place in the adventure. This time the chauffeurs would have to stay at
+the end of the village with their cars. The three were drawn up at the
+street side, close under the house walls, McClane's first. Then Sutton's,
+with Gwinnie. Then hers; behind it the short straight road where the
+firing would come down.
+
+John stood in the roadway waiting for the others. He had his hand beside
+her hand, grasping the arm of the driver's seat.
+
+"I wish you could take me with you," she said.
+
+"Can't. The orders are, all chauffeurs to stand by the cars."
+
+... His eyebrows knotted and twitched in sudden anxiety.
+
+"You know, Sharlie, you'll be fired on."
+
+"I know. I don't mind, John, I don't really. I shall be all right."
+
+"Yes. You'll be all right." But by the way he kept on glancing up and
+down the road she could see he was uneasy. "If you could have stood in
+front of those cars. _You're_ in the most dangerous place here."
+
+"Somebody's got to be in it."
+
+He looked at her and smiled. "Jeanne," he said, "in her armour."
+
+"Rot."
+
+And they were silent.
+
+"I say, John--my car _does_ cover Gwinnie's a bit, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes," he said abruptly.
+
+"_That's_ all right. You must go now. They're coming for the stretchers."
+
+His face quivered. He thrust out his hand quickly, and as she took it she
+thought: He thinks he isn't coming back. She was aware of Mrs. Rankin and
+two of the McClane men with stretchers, passing; she could see Mrs.
+Rankin looking at them as she came on, smiling over her shoulder, drawing
+the men's attention to their leave-taking.
+
+She thought: _They_ don't shake hands when they're going out. They don't
+think whether they're coming back or not.... They don't think at all. But
+then, none of them were lovers as she and John were lovers.
+
+"John, you'd better go and carry Mrs. Rankin's stretcher for her."
+
+He went.
+
+She watched them as they walked together up the short straight road to
+the battlefield at the top. Sutton followed with Alice Bartrum; then the
+McClane men; they nodded to her and smiled. Then McClane, late, running,
+trying to overtake John and Mrs. Rankin, to get to the head of his unit.
+Perhaps he was afraid that John, in his khaki, would be mistaken for the
+commandant.
+
+How childish he was with his fear and jealousy. Childish. She thought of
+his petulant refusal to let John come in with them. As if he could really
+keep him out. When it came to action they _were_ one corps; they couldn't
+very well be divided, since McClane had more men than stretchers and John
+had more stretchers than men. They would all be infinitely happier,
+working together like that, instead of standing stupidly apart, glaring
+and hating.
+
+Yet she knew what McClane and Mrs. Rankin had been playing for. McClane,
+if he could, would have taken their fine Roden cars from them; he would
+have taken Sutton. She knew that Mrs. Rankin would have taken John from
+her, Charlotte Redhead, if she could.
+
+And when she thought of the beautiful, arrogant woman, marching up to the
+battlefield with John, she wondered whether, after all, she didn't hate
+her.... No. No. It was horrible to hate a woman who at any minute might
+be killed. They said McClane didn't look after his women. He didn't
+care how they exposed themselves to the firing; he took them into
+unnecessary danger. He didn't care. He was utterly cold, utterly
+indifferent to everybody and everything except his work of getting in the
+wounded.... Well, perhaps, if he had been decent to John, she wouldn't
+have believed a word of it, and anyhow they hadn't come out there to be
+protected.
+
+She had a vision of John and McClane carrying Mrs. Rankin between them on
+a stretcher. That was what would happen if you hated. Hate could kill.
+
+Then John and she were safe. They were lovers. Lovers. Neither of them
+had ever said a word, but they owned the wonderful, immaterial fact in
+secret to each other; the thought of it moved in secret behind all their
+other thoughts. From the moment, just passed, when they held each other's
+hands she knew that John loved her, not in a dream, not in coldness, but
+with a queer unearthly ardour. He had her in his incredible, immaterial
+way, a way that none of them would understand.
+
+From the Barrow Hill Farm time? Or from yesterday? She didn't know.
+Perhaps it had gone on all the time; but it would be only since yesterday
+that he really knew it.
+
+A line of soldiers marched by, going up to the battlefield. They looked
+at her and smiled, a flashing of bright eyes and teeth all down the line.
+When they had passed the street was deserted.
+
+... That rattle on the stones was the firing. It had come at last. She
+saw Gwinnie looking back round the corner of the hood to see what it was
+like. She called to her, "Don't stick your head out, you silly cuckoo.
+You'll be hit." She said to herself, If I think about it I shall feel
+quite jumpy. It was one thing to go tearing along between two booming
+batteries, in excitement, with an end in view, and quite another thing to
+sit tight and still on a motionless car, to be fired on. A bit trying to
+the nerves, she thought, if it went on long. She was glad that her car
+stood next to the line of fire, sheltering Gwinnie's, and she wondered
+how John was getting on up there.
+
+The hands of the ambulance clock pointed to half-past three. They had
+been waiting forty minutes, then. She got down to see if any of the
+stretcher bearers were in sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were coming back. Straggling, lurching forms. White bandages. The
+wounded who could walk came first. Then the stretchers.
+
+Alice Bartrum stopped as she passed Charlotte. The red had gone from her
+sunburn, but her face was undisturbed.
+
+"You've got to wait here," she said, "for Mr. Conway and Sutty. And
+Trixie and Mac. They mayn't be back for ages. They've gone miles up
+the field."
+
+She waited.
+
+The front cars had been loaded, had driven off and returned three times.
+It was six o'clock before John appeared with Mrs. Rankin.
+
+She heard Mrs. Rankin calling sharply to her to get down and give a hand
+with the stretcher.
+
+John and Mrs. Rankin were disputing.
+
+_"Can't_ you shove it in at the bottom?" he was saying.
+
+_"No._ The first cases _must_ go on top."
+
+Her mouth snapped like a clamp. Her eyes were blazing. She was struggling
+with the head of the stretcher while John heaved at the foot. He
+staggered as he moved, and his face was sallow-white and drawn and
+glistening. When Charlotte took the shafts from him they were slippery
+with his sweat.
+
+"Is he hurt?" she whispered.
+
+"Very badly hurt," said Mrs. Rankin.
+
+"John, I mean."
+
+Mrs. Rankin snorted. "You'd better ask him."
+
+John was slouching round to the front of the car, anxious to get out of
+the sight and sound of her. He went with an uneven dropping movement of
+one hip. Charlotte followed him.
+
+"Get into your seat, Sharlie. We've got to wait for Billy and McClane."
+
+He dragged himself awkwardly into the place beside her.
+
+"John," she said, "are you hurt?"
+
+"No. But I think I've strained something. That's why I couldn't lift that
+damned stretcher."
+
+       *        * * * *
+
+The windows stood wide open to the sweet, sharp air. She heard Mrs.
+Rankin and Sutton talking on the balcony. In that dreadful messroom you
+heard everything.
+
+"What do you suppose it was then?" Mrs. Rankin said.
+
+And Sutton, "Oh, I don't know. Something upset him."
+
+"If he's going to be upset _like that_ every time he'd better go home."
+
+They were talking--she knew they were talking about John.
+
+"Hallo, Charlotte, we haven't left you much tea."
+
+"It doesn't matter."
+
+Her hunger left her suddenly. She stared with disgust at the remains of
+the tea the McClane Corps had eaten.
+
+Sutton went on. "He hasn't been sleeping properly. I've made him
+go to bed."
+
+"If you can keep him in bed for the duration of the war--"
+
+"Are you talking about John?"
+
+"We are."
+
+"I don't know what you're driving at; but I suppose he was sick on
+that beastly battlefield. It's all very well for you two; you're a
+trained nurse and Billy's a surgeon.... You aren't taken that way when
+you see blood."
+
+"Blood?" said Mrs. Rankin.
+
+"Yes. Blood. He was perfectly all right yesterday."
+
+Mrs. Rankin laughed. "Yesterday he couldn't see there was any danger. You
+could tell that by the idiotic things he said."
+
+"I saw it. And if I could he could."
+
+"Funny kid. You'd better get on with your tea. You'll be sent out again
+before you know where you are."
+
+Charlotte settled down. Sutton was standing beside her now, cutting bread
+and butter.
+
+"Hold on," he said. "That tea's all stewed and cold. I'll make you
+some of mine."
+
+She drank the hot, fragrant China tea he brought her.
+
+Presently she stood up. "I think I'll take John some of this."
+
+"Best thing you can give him," Sutton said. He got up and opened the
+doors for her, the glass doors and the door of the bedroom.
+
+She sat down beside John's bed and watched him while he drank
+Sutton's tea. He said he was all right now. No. He hadn't ruptured
+anything; he only thought he had; but Sutton had overhauled him and
+said he was all right.
+
+And all the time his face was still vexed and drawn. Something must have
+happened out there; something that hurt him to think of.
+
+"John," she said, "I wish I'd gone with you instead of Mrs. Rankin."
+
+"I wish to God you had. Everything's all right when you're with me, and
+everything's all wrong when you're not."
+
+"How do you mean, wrong?"
+
+He shook his head, frowning slightly, as a sign for her to stop. Sutton
+had come into the room.
+
+"You needn't go," he said, "I've only come for my coat and my case. I've
+got to help with the operations."
+
+He slipped into the white linen coat. There were thin smears of blood on
+the sleeves and breast. He groped about the room, peering short-sightedly
+for his case of instruments.
+
+"John, was Mrs. Rankin any good?" she asked presently.
+
+John lay back and closed his eyes as if to shut out the sight of
+Mrs. Rankin.
+
+"Don't talk to me," he said, "about that horrible woman."
+
+Sutton had turned abruptly from his search.
+
+"Good?" he said. "She was magnificent. So was Miss Bartrum. So was
+McClane."
+
+John opened his eyes. "So was Charlotte."
+
+"I quite agree with you." Sutton had found his case. His face was hidden
+by the raised lid as he peered, examining his instruments. He spoke
+abstractly. "Magnificent."
+
+When he left the room Charlotte followed him.
+
+"Billy--"
+
+"Well--"
+
+He stopped in his noiseless course down the corridor.
+
+"What was it?" she said. "What happened?"
+
+He didn't pretend not to understand her.
+
+"Oh, nothing. Conway and Mrs. Rankin didn't hit it off very well
+together."
+
+They spoke in low, rapid tones, conscious, always, of the wards behind
+the shut doors. Her feet went fast and noiseless beside his as he hurried
+to the operating theatre. They came out on to the wide landing and waited
+there by the brass lattice of the lift.
+
+"How do you mean, hit it off?"
+
+"Oh well, she thought he didn't come up quick enough with a stretcher,
+and she pitched into him."
+
+"But he was dead beat. Done. Couldn't she see that?"
+
+"No. I don't suppose she could. She was a bit excited."
+
+"She was horrible." Now that Mrs. Rankin was back safe she hated her. She
+knew she hated her.
+
+"A bit cruel, perhaps. All the same," he said, "she was magnif--"
+
+The lift had come hissing and wailing up behind him. The orderly stood in
+it, staring at Sutton's back, obsequious, yet impatient. She thought of
+the wounded men in the theatre downstairs.
+
+"You mustn't keep them waiting," she said.
+
+He stepped back into the lift. It lowered him rapidly. His chin was on a
+level with the floor when his mouth tried again and succeeded:
+"Magnificent."
+
+And she knew that she had followed him out to near him say that John had
+been magnificent, too.
+
+Gwinnie was looking in at the messroom door and saying "Do you know where
+Charlotte is?" Mrs. Rankin's voice called out, "I think you'll find her
+in _Mr. Conway's_ bedroom." One of the chauffeurs laughed. Charlotte knew
+what they were thinking.
+
+Gwinnie failed to retort. She was excited, shaken out of her stolidity.
+
+"Oh, there you are! I've got something ripping to tell you. Not in here."
+
+They slouched, with their arms slung affectionately round each other's
+waists, into their own room. Behind the shut door Gwinnie began.
+
+"The Colonel's most frightfully pleased about Berlaere."
+
+"Does he think they'll hold it?"
+
+"It isn't that. He's pleased about you."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"You and John. What you did there. And your bringing back the guns."
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"Mac. The old boy was going on to him like anything about you last
+night. It means you'll be sent out every time. Every time there's
+anything big on."
+
+"Oh-h! Let's go and tell John.... I suppose," she added, "that's what was
+the matter with Mrs. Rankin."
+
+She wondered whether it had been the matter with Billy Sutton too; if he
+too were jealous and afraid.
+
+That night Mrs. Rankin told her what the Colonel really had said: "'C'est
+magnifique, mais ce n'est pas--la Croix Rouge.' If you're all sent home
+to-morrow it'll serve you jolly well right," she said.
+
+But somehow she couldn't make it sound as if he had been angry.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+She waited.
+
+John had told her to stay there with the wounded man up the turn of the
+stable yard while he went for the stretcher. His car, packed with
+wounded, stood a little way up the street, headed for Ghent. Sutton's
+car, with one of McClane's chauffeurs, was in front of it, ready; she
+could hear the engine purring.
+
+Instead of going at once for the stretcher John had followed Sutton into
+the house opposite, the house with the narrow grey shutters. And he had
+called to her again across the road to wait for him.
+
+Behind her in the yard the wounded man sat on the cobblestones, his back
+propped against the stable wall. He was safe there, safer than he would
+have been outside in the ambulance.
+
+It was awful to think that he would have been left behind if they had not
+found him at the last minute among the straw.
+
+She went and stood by the yard entrance to see whether John were coming
+with the stretcher. A soldier came out of the house with the narrow
+shutters, wounded, limping, his foot bound to a splint. Then Sutton came,
+hurrying to help him. He shouted to her, "Come on, Charlotte, hurry up!"
+and she called back, "I've got to wait here for John."
+
+She watched them go on slowly up the road to Sutton's car; she saw them
+get in; she saw the car draw out and rush away.
+
+Then she saw John come out of the door of the house and stand there,
+looking up and down the street. Once she saw him glance back over his
+shoulder at something behind him in the room. The same instant she heard
+the explosion and saw the shell burst in the middle of the street, not
+fifty yards from the ambulance. Half a minute after she saw John dash
+from the doorway and run, run at an incredible pace, towards his car. She
+heard him crank up the engine.
+
+She supposed that he was going to back towards the yard, and she wondered
+whether she could lift up the Belgian and carry him out. She stooped over
+him, put her hands under his armpits, raising him and wondering. Better
+not. He had a bad wound. Better wait for the stretcher.
+
+She turned, suddenly, arrested. The noise she heard was not the grating
+noise of a car backing, it was the scream of a car getting away; it
+dropped to a heavy whirr and diminished.
+
+She looked out. Up the road she saw John's car rushing furiously
+towards Ghent.
+
+The Belgian had heard it. His eyes moved. Black hare's eyes, terrified.
+It was not possible, he said, that they had been left behind?
+
+No, it was not possible. John had forgotten them; but he would
+remember; he would come back. In five minutes. Seven minutes. She had
+waited fifteen.
+
+The Belgian was muttering something. He complained of being left there.
+He said he was not anxious about himself, but about Mademoiselle.
+Mademoiselle ought not to have been left. She was sitting on the ground
+now, beside him.
+
+"It'll be all right," she said. "He'll come back." When he remembered he
+would come back.
+
+She had waited half an hour.
+
+Another shell. It had burst over there at the backs of the houses, beyond
+the stable.
+
+She wondered whether it would be safer to drag her man across the street
+under the wall of the Town Hall. They would be sure to aim at it and miss
+it, whereas any minute they might hit the stable.
+
+At the moment while she wondered there was a third tremendous explosion,
+the crash and roar of brickwork falling like coal down an enormous chute.
+It came from the other side of the street a little way down. It couldn't
+be far from the Town Hall. That settled it. Much better stay where they
+were. The Belgian had put his arm round her, drawing her to him, away
+from the noise and shock of the shell.
+
+It was clear now that John was not coming back. He had forgotten them.
+
+The Belgian's hold slackened; he dozed, falling against her and
+recovering himself with a jerk and begging her pardon. She drew down his
+head on to her shoulder and let it rest there. Her mind was soaked in the
+smell of his rank breath, of the warm sweat that oozed through his tunic,
+the hot, fetid smell that came through his unlaced boots. She didn't
+care; she was too sorry for him. She could feel nothing but the helpless
+pressure of his body against hers, nothing but her pity that hurt her and
+was exquisite like love. Yesterday she had thought it would be good to
+die with John. Now she thought it would be good to die with the wounded
+Belgian, since John had left her there to die.
+
+And again, she had a vehement desire for life, a horror of the unjust
+death John was bringing on them.
+
+But of course there wouldn't be any death. If nobody came she would walk
+back to Ghent and bring out the ambulance.
+
+If only he had shouted to her to carry the wounded man and come. In the
+minute between the concussion of the shell and the cranking of the
+engine. But she could see him rushing. If only she knew _why_ he had left
+them.... She wanted to get back to Ghent, to see John, to know. To know
+if John--if John really _was_--Nothing could be worse than not knowing.
+
+It didn't matter so much his forgetting her. The awful thing was his
+forgetting the wounded man. How could you forget a wounded man? When she
+remembered the Belgian's terrified hare's eyes she hated John.
+
+And, as she sat there supporting his head with her shoulder, she thought
+again. There must have been a wounded man in the house John had come out
+of. Was it possible that he had forgotten him, too?... He hadn't
+forgotten. She could see him looking back over his shoulder; looking at
+something that was lying there, that couldn't be anything but a wounded
+man. Or a dead man. Whatever it was, it had been the last thing he had
+seen; the last thing he had thought of before he made his dash. It
+wasn't possible that he had left a wounded man in there, alive. It was
+not possible.
+
+And all the time while she kept on telling herself that it was not
+possible she saw a wounded man in the room John had left; she saw his
+head turning to the doorway, and his eyes, frightened; she felt his
+anguish in the moment that he knew himself abandoned. Not forgotten.
+Abandoned.
+
+She would have to go over to the house and see. She must know whether the
+man was there or not there. She raised the Belgian's head, gently, from
+her shoulder. She would have to wake him and tell him what she was going
+to do, so that he mightn't think she had left him and be frightened.
+
+But the Belgian roused himself to a sudden virile determination.
+Mademoiselle must _not_ cross the road. It was too dangerous.
+Mademoiselle would be hit. He played on her pity with an innocent,
+cunning cajolery. "Mademoiselle must not leave me. I do not want
+to be left."
+
+"Only for one minute. One little minute. I think there's a wounded man,
+like you, Monsieur, in that house."
+
+"Ah--h--A wounded man?" He seemed to acknowledge the integrity of her
+purpose. "If only I were not wounded, if only I could crawl an inch, I
+would go instead of Mademoiselle."
+
+       *        * * * *
+
+The wounded man lay on the floor of the room in his corner by the
+fireplace where John had left him. His coat was rolled up under his head
+for a pillow. He lay on his side, with humped hips and knees drawn up,
+and one hand, half clenched, half relaxed, on his breast under the
+drooped chin; so that at first she thought he was alive, sleeping. She
+knelt down beside him and clasped his wrist; she unbuttoned his tunic
+and put in her hand under his shirt above the point of his heart. He was
+certainly dead. No pulse; no beat; no sign of breathing. Yet his body
+was warm still, and limp as if with sleep. He couldn't have been dead
+very long.
+
+And he was young. A boy. Not more than sixteen. John couldn't have left
+him.
+
+She wasn't certain. She was no nearer certainty so long as she didn't
+know when the boy had died. If only she knew--
+
+They hadn't unfastened his tunic and shirt to feel over his heart if he
+were dead. So he couldn't have been dead when they left him.... But there
+was Sutton. Billy wouldn't have left him unless he had been dead. Her
+mind worked rapidly, jumping from point to point, trying to find some
+endurable resting place.... He was so young, so small, so light. Light.
+It wouldn't take two to carry him. She could have picked him up and
+carried him herself. Billy had had the lame man to look after. He had
+left the boy to John. She saw John looking back over his shoulder.
+
+She got up and went through the house, through all the rooms, to see if
+there were any more of them that John had left there. She felt tired out
+and weak, sick with her belief, her fear of what John had done. The dead
+boy was alone in the house. She covered his face with her handkerchief
+and went back.
+
+The Belgian waited for her at the entrance to the yard. He had
+dragged himself there, crawling on his hands and knees. He smiled
+when he saw her.
+
+"I was coming to look for you, Mademoiselle."
+
+She had him safe beside her against the stable wall. He let his head rest
+on her shoulder now, glad of the protecting contact. She tried not to
+think about John. Something closed down between them. Black. Black;
+shutting him off, closing her heart against him, leaving her heart hard
+and sick. The light went slowly out of the street, out of the sky. The
+dark came, the dark sounding with the "Boom--Boom" of the guns, lit with
+spiked diamond flashes like falling stars.
+
+The Belgian had gone to sleep again when she heard the ambulance coming
+down the street.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Is that you, Charlotte?"
+
+"Billy--! What made you come?"
+
+"Conway. He's in a frantic funk. Said he'd lost you. He thought you'd
+gone on with me."
+
+How awful it would be if Billy knew.
+
+"It was my fault," she lied. "He told me to go on with you." She could
+hear him telling her to wait for him in the stable yard.
+
+"I'd have come before only I didn't see him soon enough. I had an
+operation.... Is that a wounded man you've got there? I suppose he lost
+him, too?"
+
+"He didn't know he was here."
+
+"I see."
+
+Then she remembered. Billy would know. Billy would tell her.
+
+"Billy--was that boy dead when you left him! The boy in the house
+over there."
+
+He was stooping to the Belgian, examining his bandages, and he didn't
+answer all at once. He seemed to be meditating.
+
+"Was he?" she repeated.
+
+It struck her that Billy was surprised.
+
+"Because--" She stopped there. She couldn't say to him, "I want to know
+whether John left him dead or alive."
+
+"He was dead all right." Sutton's voice came up slow and muffled out of
+his meditation.
+
+It was all right. She might have known. She might have known. Vaguely for
+a moment she wondered why Billy had come for her and not John; then she
+was frightened.
+
+"Billy--John isn't hurt, is he?"
+
+"No. Rather not. A bit done up. I made him go and lie down.... Look here,
+we must get out of this."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The McClane Corps were gathered on their side of the messroom. They
+greeted her with shouts of joy, but their eyes looked at her queerly, as
+if they knew something dreadful had happened to her.
+
+"You should have stood in with us, Charlotte," Mrs. Rankin was saying.
+"Then you wouldn't get mislaid among the shells." She was whispering.
+"Dr. McClane, if you took Charlotte out among the shells, would you run
+away and leave her there?"
+
+"I'd try not to."
+
+Oh yes. He wouldn't run away and leave her. But he wouldn't care where he
+took her. He wouldn't care whether a shell got her or not. But John
+cared. If only she knew _why_.... Their queer faces sobered her and
+suddenly she knew. She saw Sutton coming out of the house with the narrow
+shutters; she heard him shouting to her, "Come on, Charlotte, hurry up!"
+
+John must have heard him. He must really have thought that she had
+gone with him.
+
+But he must have known, too, that she wouldn't go. He must have known
+that if he told her to wait for him she would wait. So that--
+
+The voices of the McClane women ceased abruptly. One of them turned
+round. Charlotte saw John standing between the glasses of the two doors.
+He came in and she heard Mrs. Rankin calling out in her hard, insolent
+voice, "Well, Mr. Conway, so you've got in safe."
+
+She was always like that, hard and insolent, with her damned courage. As
+if courage were ever anything more than just being decent, and as if
+other people couldn't be decent too. She hated John because she couldn't
+make him come to her, couldn't make him look with pleasure at her
+beautiful, arrogant face. She disliked Sutton and McClane for the same
+reason, but she hated John. He treated her face with a hardness and
+insolence like her own. You could see her waiting for her revenge,
+watching every minute for a chance to stick her blade into him. He was
+pretending that he hadn't heard her.
+
+His hair stood up in pointed tufts, rumpled from his pillow. His eyes had
+a dazed, stupid look as if he were not perfectly awake. But at the sound
+of the rasping voice his mouth had tightened; it was pinched and sharp
+with pain. He didn't look at Mrs. Rankin. He came to her, Charlotte
+Redhead, straight; straight as if she had drawn him from his sleep.
+
+The McClane people got up, one after another, and went out.
+
+"Charlotte," he said, "did you really think I'd left you?"
+
+"I thought you'd left me. But I knew you hadn't."
+
+"You _knew_ it wasn't possible?"
+
+"Yes. Inside me I knew."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry. Sutton told me you were going on with him, and I
+thought you'd gone."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+She would remember for ever the talk they had on the balcony that day
+while Antwerp was falling.
+
+They were standing there, she and John Conway and Sutton, looking over
+the station and the railway lines to the open country beyond: the fields,
+the tall slender trees, the low mounds of the little hills, bristling and
+dark. Round the corner of the balcony they could see into the _Place_
+below; it was filled with a thick black crowd of refugees. Antwerp was
+falling. Presently the ambulance train would come in and they would have
+to go over there to the station with their stretchers and carry out the
+wounded. Meanwhile they waited.
+
+John brooded. His face was heavy and sombre with discontent. "No," he
+said. "No. It isn't good enough."
+
+"What isn't?"
+
+"What we're doing here. Going to all those little tin-pot places. The
+real fighting isn't down there. They ought to send us to Antwerp."
+
+"I suppose they send us where they think we're most wanted."
+
+"I don't believe they do. We were fools not to have insisted on going
+to Antwerp, instead of letting ourselves be stuck here in a rotten
+side show."
+
+"We've had enough to do, anyhow," said Sutton.
+
+"And there isn't anybody but us and Mac to do it," Charlotte said.
+
+John's eyebrows twisted. "Yes; but we're not _in_ it. I want to be in it.
+In the big thing; the big dangerous thing."
+
+Sutton sighed and got up and left them. John waited for the closing
+of the door.
+
+"Does it strike you," he said, "that Billy isn't very keen?"
+
+"No. It doesn't. What do you mean?"
+
+"I notice that he's jolly glad when he can get an indoor job."
+
+"That's because they're short of surgeons. He only wants to do what's
+most useful."
+
+"I didn't say he had cold feet."
+
+"Of course he hasn't. Billy would go to Antwerp like a shot if they'd
+let him. He feels just as we do about it. That's why he got up and
+went away."
+
+"He'd go. But he wouldn't enjoy it."
+
+"Oh, don't talk about 'enjoying.'"
+
+"Sharlie, you don't mean to say that _you're_ not keen?"
+
+"No. It's only that I don't care as much as I did about what you call the
+romance of it; and I do care more about the solid work. It seems to me
+that it doesn't matter who does it so long as it's done."
+
+"I'd very much rather I did it than McClane. So would you."
+
+"Yes. I would. But I'd be sorry if poor little Mac didn't get any of it.
+And all the time I know it doesn't matter which of us it is. It doesn't
+matter whether we're in danger or out of danger, or whether we're in the
+big thing or a little one."
+
+"Don't you want to be in the big thing?"
+
+"Yes. I _want_. But I know my wanting doesn't matter. I don't matter.
+None of us matters."
+
+That was how she felt about it now that it had come to defeat, now that
+Antwerp was falling. Yesterday they, she and John, had been vivid
+entities, intensely real, living and moving in the war as in a
+containing space that was real enough, since it was there, but real like
+hell or heaven or God, not to be grasped or felt in its reality; only
+the stretch of it that they covered was real, the roads round Ghent, the
+burning villages, the places where they served, Berlaere and Melle,
+Quatrecht and Zele; the wounded men. Yesterday her thoughts about John
+had mattered, her doubt and fear of him and her pain; her agony of
+desire that he should be, should be always, what she loved him for
+being; and her final certainty had been the one important, the one real
+thing. To-day she had difficulty in remembering all that, as if _they_
+hadn't really been. To-day they were unimportant to themselves and to
+each other; small, not quite real existences, enveloped by an immense
+reality that closed in on them; alive; black, palpitating defeat. It
+made nothing of them, of their bodies nothing but the parts they worked
+with: feet and hands. Nothing mattered, nothing existed but the war, and
+the armies, the Belgian army, beaten.
+
+Antwerp was falling. And afterwards it would be Ghent, and then Ostend.
+And then there would be no more Belgium.
+
+But John wouldn't hear of it. Ghent wouldn't fall.
+
+"It won't fall because it isn't a fortified city," she objected. "But
+it'll surrender. It'll have to."
+
+"It won't. If the Germans come anywhere near we shall drive them back."
+
+"They _are_ near. They're all round in a ring with only a little narrow
+opening up _there_. And the ring's getting closer."
+
+"It's easier to push back a narrow ring than a wide one."
+
+"It's easier to break through a thin ring than a thick one, and who's
+going to push?"
+
+"We are. The British. We'll come pouring in, hundreds of thousands of us,
+through that little narrow opening up there."
+
+"If we only would--"
+
+"Of course we shall. If I thought we wouldn't, if I thought we were going
+to let the Belgians down, if we _betrayed_ them--My God! I'd kill
+myself.... No. No, I wouldn't. That wouldn't hurt enough. I'd give up my
+damned country and be a naturalized Belgian. Why, they trust us. They
+_trust_ us to save Antwerp."
+
+"If we don't, that wouldn't be betrayal."
+
+"It would. The worst kind. It would be like betraying a wounded man; or a
+woman. Like me betraying you, Jeanne. You needn't look like that. It's so
+bad that it can't happen."
+
+Through the enveloping sadness she felt a prick of joy, seeing him so
+valiant, so unbeaten in his soul. It supported her certainty. His soul
+was so big that nothing could satisfy it but the big thing, the big
+dangerous thing. He wouldn't even believe that Antwerp was falling.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She knew. She knew. There was not the smallest doubt about it any more.
+She saw it happen.
+
+It happened in the village near Lokeren, the village whose name she
+couldn't remember. The Germans had taken Lokeren that morning; they were
+_in_ Lokeren. At any minute they might be in the village.
+
+You had to pass through a little town to get to it. And there they had
+been told that they must not go on. And they had gone on. And in the
+village they were told that they must go back and they had not gone back.
+They had been given five minutes to get in their wounded and they had
+been there three-quarters of an hour, she and John working together, and
+Trixie Rankin with McClane and two of his men.
+
+Charlotte had been sorry for Sutton and Gwinnie and the rest of McClane's
+corps who had not come out with them to this new place, but had been sent
+back again to Melle where things had been so quiet all morning that they
+hadn't filled their ambulances, and half of them had hung about doing
+nothing. She had fretted at the stupidity which had sent them where they
+were not wanted. But here there were not enough hands for the stretchers,
+and Charlotte was wanted every second of the time. From the first minute
+you could see what you were in for.
+
+The retreat.
+
+And for an instant, in the blind rush and confusion of it, she had lost
+sight of John. She had turned the car round and left it with its nose
+pointing towards Ghent. Trixie Rankin and the McClane men were at the
+front cars taking out the stretchers; John and McClane were going up the
+road. She had got out her own stretcher and was following them when the
+battery came tearing down the road and cut them off. It tore headlong,
+swerving and careening with great rattling and crashing noises. She could
+see the faces of the men, thrown back, swaying; there was no terror in
+them, only a sort of sullen anger and resentment.
+
+She stood on the narrow sandy track beside the causeway to let it pass,
+and when a gap came in the train she dashed through to get to John. And
+John was not there. When all the artillery had passed he was not there;
+only McClane, going on up the middle of the street by himself.
+
+She ran after him and asked him what had happened to John. He turned,
+dreamy and deliberate, utterly unperturbed. John, he said, had gone on to
+look for a wounded man who was said to have been taken into one of those
+houses there, on the right, in the lane. She went down the lane with her
+stretcher and McClane waited for them at the top. The doors of the houses
+were open; Flemish women stood outside, looking up to the street. There
+was one house with a shut door, a tall green door; she thought that would
+be the one that John had gone into. She rapped and he opened the door and
+came striding out, holding his head high. He shut the door quietly and
+looked at her, an odd look, piercing and grave.
+
+"Dead," he said.
+
+And when McClane met them he said it again, "Dead."
+
+The wounded were being brought down from Lokeren in trams that ran on to
+a siding behind a little fir plantation outside the village. At the wide
+top of the street a table of boards and trestles stood by the foot track,
+and the stretchers were laid on it as they came in, and the wounded had
+their first bandaging and dressings there. McClane took up his place by
+this table, and the stretcher bearers went backwards and forwards between
+the village and the plantation.
+
+Beyond the plantation the flagged road stretched flat and grey, then bent
+in a deep curve, and on the wider sweep of the curve a row of tall,
+slender trees stood up like a screen.
+
+It would be round the turn of the road under the trees that the Germans
+would come when they came. You couldn't lose this sense of them, coming
+on behind there, not yet seen, but behind, coming on, pursuing the
+retreat of the batteries. Every now and then they found themselves
+looking up towards the turn. The grey, bending sweep and the screen of
+tall trees had a fascination for them, a glamour; and above the movements
+of their hands and feet their minds watched, intent, excited, but without
+fear. There was no fear in the village. The women came out of their
+houses carrying cups of water for the men's thirst; they seemed to be
+concerned, not with the coming of the Germans, but with the bringing in
+of the wounded and the presence of the English ambulance in their street.
+
+And the four stretcher bearers came and went, from house to house and
+between the village and the plantation, working, working steadily. Yet
+they were aware, all the time, of the pursuing terror, behind the turn of
+the road; they were held still in their intentness. Over all of them was
+a quiet, fixed serenity. McClane's body had lost its eager, bustling
+energy and was still; his face was grave, preoccupied and still; only
+Trixie Rankin went rushing, and calling out to her quiet man in a fierce,
+dominating excitement.
+
+And in John's face and in his alert body there was happiness, happiness
+that was almost ecstasy; it ran through and shone from him, firm and
+still, like a flame that couldn't go out. It penetrated her and made her
+happy and satisfied and sure of him. She had seen it leap up in him as he
+swung himself into the seat beside her when they started. He was
+restless, restless every day until they were sent out; he couldn't wait
+in peace before they had set off on the adventure, as if he were afraid
+that at the last minute something would happen to dash his chance from
+him. She couldn't find this passionate uneasiness in herself; she waited
+with a stolid trust in the event; but she had something of his feeling.
+After all, it was there, the romance, the fascination, the glamour; you
+couldn't deny it any more than you could deny the beating of the blood in
+your veins. It was their life.
+
+They had been in the village three quarters of an hour. John and
+Charlotte waited while McClane at his table was putting the last bandage
+on the last wound. In another minute they would be gone. It was then that
+the Belgian Red Cross man came running to them. Had they taken a man with
+a wound in his back? A bad wound? As big as that? No? Then he was still
+here, and he had got to take him to the ambulance. No, he didn't know
+where he was. He might be in one of those houses where they took in the
+wounded, or he might be up there by the tramway in the plantation. Would
+they take a stretcher and find him? _He_ had to go back to the tramway.
+The last tram was coming in from Lokeren. He ran back, fussy and a little
+frightened.
+
+John shouted out, "Hold on, McClane, there's another tram coming," and
+set off up the street. They had taken all the men out of the houses;
+therefore the man with the bad wound must have been left somewhere by the
+plantation. They went there, carrying their stretcher, going, going up to
+the last minute, in delight, in the undying thrill of the danger.
+
+The wounded man was not in the plantation. As they looked for him the
+tram from Lokeren slid in, Red Cross men on the steps, clinging. The
+doors were flung open and the wounded men came out, stumbling, falling,
+pushing each other. Somebody cried, "No stretchers! Damned bad
+management. With the Germans on our backs." A Red Cross man, with a
+puffed white face, stood staring at John and Charlotte, stupefied.
+
+"Are they coming?" John said.
+
+"Coming? They'll be here in ten minutes--five minutes." He snarled, a
+terrified animal.
+
+He had caught sight of their stretcher and snatched at it, thrusting out
+his face, the face of a terrified animal, open mouth, and round,
+palpitating eyes. He lifted his hand as though he would have struck at
+Charlotte, but John pushed him back. He was brutalized, made savage and
+cruel by terror; he had a lust to hurt.
+
+"You can't have our stretcher," Charlotte said.
+
+She could see they didn't want it. This was the last tram. The serious
+cases had been sent on first. All these men could walk or hobble along
+somehow with help. But they were the last in the retreat of the wounded;
+they were the men who had been nearest to the enemy, and they had known
+the extremity of fear.
+
+"You can't have it. It's wanted for a badly wounded man."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"We don't know. We're looking for him."
+
+"Ah, pah! We can't wait till you find him. Do you think we're going to
+stand here to be taken?--For one man!"
+
+They went on through the plantation, stumbling and growling, dragging the
+wounded out into the road.
+
+"If," Charlotte said, "we only knew where he was."
+
+John stood there silent; his head was turned towards the far end of the
+wood, the Lokeren end. The terror of the wood held him. He seemed to be
+listening; listening, but only half awake.
+
+Here, where the line stopped, a narrow track led downwards out of the
+wood. Charlotte started to go along it. "Come on," she said. She saw him
+coming, quickly, but with drawn, sleep-walking feet. The track led into a
+muddy alley at the back of the village.
+
+There was a house there and a woman stood at the door, beckoning. She ran
+up to them. "He's here," she whispered, "he's here."
+
+He lay on his side on the flagged floor of the kitchen. His shirt was
+ripped open, and in his white back, below the shoulder blade, there was a
+deep red wound, like a pit, with a wide mouth, gaping. He was ugly, a
+Flamand; he had a puffed face with pushed out lips and a scrub of red
+beard; but Charlotte loved him.
+
+They carried him out through the wood on to the road. He lay inert,
+humped up, heavy. They had to go slowly, so slowly that they could
+see the wounded and the Red Cross men going on far before them, down
+the street.
+
+The flagged road swayed and swung with the swinging bulge of the
+stretcher as they staggered. The shafts kept on slipping and slipping;
+her grasp closed, tighter and tighter; her arms ached in their sockets;
+but her fingers and the palms of her hands were firm and dry; they could
+keep their hold.
+
+They had only gone a few yards along the road when suddenly John
+stopped and sank his end of the stretcher, compelling Charlotte to
+lower hers too.
+
+"What did you do that for?"
+
+"We can't, Charlotte. He's too damned heavy."
+
+"If I can, you can."
+
+He didn't move. He stood there, staring with his queer, hypnotised eyes,
+at the man lying in the middle of the road, at the red pit in the white
+back, at the wide, ragged lips of the wound, gaping.
+
+"For goodness' sake pick him up. It isn't the moment for resting."
+
+"Look here--it isn't good enough. We can't get him there in time."
+
+"You're--you're _not_ going to leave him!"
+
+"We've got to leave him. We can't let the whole lot be taken just
+for one man."
+
+"We'll be taken if you stand here talking."
+
+He went on a step or two, slouching; then stood still, waiting for her,
+ashamed. He was changed from himself, seized and driven by the fear that
+had possessed the men in the plantation. She could see it in his
+retreating eyes.
+
+She cried out--her voice sounded sharp and strange--"John--! You _can't_
+leave him."
+
+The wounded man who had lain inert, thinking that they were only resting,
+now turned his head at her cry. She saw his eyes shaking, palpitating
+with terror.
+
+"You've frightened him," she said. "I won't have him frightened."
+
+She didn't really believe that John was going. He went slowly, still
+ashamed, and stopped again and waited for her.
+
+"Come back," she said, "this minute, and pick up that stretcher
+and get on."
+
+"I tell you it isn't good enough."
+
+"Oh, go then, if you're such a damned coward, and send Mac to me.
+Or Trixie."
+
+"They'll have gone."
+
+He was walking backwards, his face set towards the turn of the road.
+
+"Come on, you little fool. You can't carry him."
+
+"I can. And I shall, if Mac doesn't come."
+
+"You'll be taken," he shouted.
+
+"I don't care. If I'm taken, I'm taken. I shall carry him on my back."
+
+While John still went backwards she thought: It's all right. If he sees
+I'm not coming he won't go. He'll come back to the stretcher.
+
+But John had turned and was running.
+
+Even then she didn't realise that he was running away, that she was left
+there with the wounded man. Things didn't happen like that. People ran
+away all of a sudden, in panics, because they couldn't help it; they
+didn't begin by going slowly and stopping to argue and turning round and
+walking backwards; they were gone before they knew where they were. She
+believed that he was going for the ambulance. One moment she believed it
+and the next she knew better. As she waited in the road (conscious of the
+turn, the turn with its curving screen of tall trees) her knowledge, her
+dreadful knowledge, came to her, dark and evil, creeping up and up. John
+wasn't coming back. He would no more come back than he had come back the
+other day. Sutton had come. The other day had been like to-day. John was
+like that.
+
+Her mind stood still in amazement, seeing, seeing clearly, what John was
+like. For a moment she forgot about the Germans.
+
+She thought: I don't believe Mac's gone. He wouldn't go until he'd got
+them all in. Mac would come.
+
+Then she thought about the Germans again. All this was making it much
+more dangerous for Mac and everybody, with the Germans coming round the
+corner any minute; she had no business to stand there thinking; she must
+pick that man up on her back and go on.
+
+She stooped down and turned him over on his chest. Then, with great
+difficulty, she got him up on to his feet; she took him by the wrists
+and, stooping again, swung him on to her shoulder. These acts, requiring
+attention and drawing on all her energy, dulled the pain of her
+knowledge. When she stood up with him she saw John and McClane coming to
+her. She lowered her man gently back on to the stretcher.
+
+The Flamand, thinking that she had given it up and that he was now
+abandoned to the Germans, groaned.
+
+"It's all right," she said. "He's coming."
+
+She saw McClane holding John by the arm, and in her pain there was a
+sharper pang. She had the illusion of his being dragged back unwillingly.
+
+McClane smiled as he came to her. He glanced at the Flamand lying heaped
+on his stretcher.
+
+"He's been too much for you, has he?"
+
+"Too much--? Yes."
+
+Instantly she saw that John had lied, and instantly she backed his lie.
+She hated McClane thinking she had failed; but anything was better than
+his knowing the truth.
+
+John and McClane picked up the stretcher and went on quickly. Charlotte
+walked beside the Flamand with her hand on his shoulder to comfort him.
+Again her pity was like love.
+
+From the top of the village she could see the opening of the lane. Down
+there was the house with the tall green door where the dead man was. John
+had _said_ he was dead.
+
+Supposing he wasn't? Or supposing he was still warm and limp like the boy
+at Melle? She must know; it was a thing she must know for certain, or she
+would never have any peace. And when the Flamand was laid out on
+McClane's table, while McClane dressed his wound, she slipped down the
+lane and opened the green door.
+
+The man lay on a row of packing cases with his feet parted. She put one
+hand over his heart and the other on his forehead under the lock of
+bloodstained hair. He was dead: stiff dead and cold. His tunic and shirt
+had been unbuttoned to ease his last breathing. She had a queer baffled
+feeling of surprise and incompleteness, as if some awful sense in her
+would have been satisfied if she had seen that he had been living when
+John had said that he was dead. To-day would then have been linked on
+firmly to the other day.
+
+John stood at the top of the lane. He scowled at her as she came.
+
+"What do you think you're doing!" he said.
+
+"I went to that house--to see if the man was dead."
+
+"You'd no business to. I told you he was dead."
+
+"I wanted to make sure."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening she had just gone to her room when somebody knocked at her
+door. McClane stood outside, straddling, his way when he had got
+something important on hand. He asked if he might come in and speak to
+her for a minute.
+
+She sat down on the edge of her bed and he sat on Gwinnie's, elbows
+crooked out, hands planted on wide parted knees; he leaned forward,
+looking at her, his face innocent and yet astute; his thick,
+expressionless eyes clear now and penetrating. He seemed to be fairly
+humming with activity left over from the excitement of the day. He was
+always either dreamy and withdrawn, or bursting, bursting with energy,
+and at odd moments he would drop off suddenly to sleep with his chin
+doubled on his breast, recovering from his energy. Perhaps he had just
+waked up now to this freshness.
+
+"Look here," he said. "You didn't break down. That man wasn't too
+heavy for you."
+
+"He was. He was an awful weight. I couldn't have carried him a yard."
+
+"That won't do, Charlotte. I _saw_ you take him on your back."
+
+She could feel the blood rising up in her face before him. He was hurting
+her with shame.
+
+He persisted, merciless. "It was Conway who broke down."
+
+She had tears now.
+
+"Nobody knows," he said gently, "but you and me.... I want to talk to
+you about him. He must be got away from the Front. He must be got out
+of Belgium."
+
+"You always wanted to get him away."
+
+"Only because I saw he would break down."
+
+"How could you tell?"
+
+"I'm a psychotherapist. It's my business to tell."
+
+But she was still on the defensive.
+
+"You never liked him."
+
+"I neither like nor dislike him. To me Conway is simply a sick man. If I
+could cure him--"
+
+"Can't you?"
+
+"Not as you think. I can't turn his cowardice into courage. I might turn
+it into something else but not that. That's why I say he ought to go
+home. You must tell him."
+
+"I can't. Couldn't Billy tell him?"
+
+"Well, hardly. He's his commandant."
+
+"Can't _you_?"
+
+"Not I. You know what he thinks about me."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That I've got a grudge against him. That I'm jealous of him. You thought
+it yourself."
+
+"Did I?"
+
+"You did. Look here, I say--I wanted to take you three into my corps. And
+you'd have been sent home after the Berlaere affair if I hadn't spoken
+for you. So much for my jealousy."
+
+"I only thought you were jealous of John."
+
+"Why, it was I who got him sent out that first day."
+
+"_Was_ it?"
+
+"Yes. I wanted to give him his chance. And," he added meditatively, "I
+wanted to know whether I was right. I wanted to see what he would do."
+
+"I don't think it now," she said, reverting.
+
+"_That's_ all right."
+
+He laughed his brief, mirthless laugh, the assent of his egoism. But his
+satisfaction had nothing personal in it. He was pleased because justice,
+abstract justice, had been done. But she suspected his sincerity. He did
+things for you, not because he liked you, but for some other reason; and
+he would be so carried away by doing them that he would behave as though
+he liked you when he didn't, when all the time you couldn't for one
+minute rouse him from his immense indifference. She knew he liked her for
+sticking to her post and for taking the wounded man on her back, because
+that was the sort of thing he would have done himself. And he had only
+helped John because he wanted to see what he would do. Therefore she
+suspected his sincerity.
+
+But, no; he wasn't jealous.
+
+"And now," he went on, "you must get him to go home at once, or he'll
+have a bad break-down. You've got to tell him, Charlotte."
+
+She stood up, ready. "Where is he?"
+
+"By himself. In his room."
+
+She went to him there.
+
+He was sitting at his little table. He had been trying to write a letter,
+but he had pushed it from him and left it. You could see he was absorbed
+in some bitter meditation. She seated herself at the head of his bed, on
+his pillow, where she could look down at him.
+
+"John," she said, "you can't go on like this--"
+
+"Like what?"
+
+He held his head high; but the excited, happy light had gone out of his
+eyes; they stared, not as though they saw anything, but withdrawn, as
+though he were contemplating the fearful memory of his fear.
+
+And she was sorry for him, so sorry that she couldn't bear it. She bit
+her lip lest she should sob out with pain.
+
+"Oh--" she said, and her pain stopped her.
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about--'going on like this.'
+I'm--going--on."
+
+"What's the good? You've had enough. If I were you I should go home. You
+know you can't stand it."
+
+"What? Go and leave my cars to Sutton?"
+
+"McClane could take them."
+
+"I don't know how long McClane signed on for. _I_ signed on for the
+duration of the war."
+
+"There wasn't any signing on."
+
+"Well, if you like, I swore I wouldn't go back till it was over."
+
+"Yes, and supposing it happens again."
+
+"What _should_ happen again?"
+
+"What happened this afternoon.... And it wasn't the first time."
+
+"Do you _know_ what happened?"
+
+"I _saw_ what happened. You simply went to pieces."
+
+"My dear Charlotte, _you_ went to pieces, if you like."
+
+"I know that's what you told Mac. And _he_ knows how true it is."
+
+"Does he? Well--he shan't have my ambulances. You don't suppose I'm
+going to let McClane fire me out of Belgium?... I suppose he put you up
+to this...."
+
+He stood up as a sign to her to leave him. "I don't see that there's
+anything more to be said."
+
+"There's one thing." (She slid to her feet.) "_You_ swore you'd stick
+till the war's over. _I_ swore, if I had to choose between you and the
+wounded, it shouldn't be you."
+
+"You haven't got to choose. You've only got to obey orders...."
+
+His face stiffened. He looked like some hard commander imposing an
+unanswerable will.
+
+"... The next time," he said, "you'll be good enough to remember that I
+settle what risks are to be taken, not you."
+
+Her soul stiffened, too, and was hard. She stood up against him with her
+shoulder to the door.
+
+"It sounds all right," she said. "But the _next time_ I'll carry him on
+my back all the way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She went to bed with her knowledge. He funked and lied. The two things
+she couldn't stand. His funk and his lying were a real part of him. And
+it was as if she had always known it, as if all the movements of her mind
+had been an effort to escape her knowledge.
+
+She opened her eyes. Something hurt them. Gwinnie, coming late to bed,
+had turned on the electric light. And as she rolled over, turning her
+back to the light and to Gwinnie, her mind shifted. It saw suddenly the
+flame leaping in John's face. His delight in danger, that happiness he
+felt when he went out to meet it, happiness springing up bright and new
+every day; that was a real part of him. She couldn't doubt it. She knew.
+And she was left with her queer, baffled sense of surprise and
+incompleteness. She couldn't see the nature of the bond between these two
+realities.
+
+That was his secret, his mystery.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+She woke very early in the morning with one clear image in her mind: what
+John had done yesterday.
+
+Her mind seemed to have watched all night behind her sleep to attack her
+with it in the first moment of waking. She had got to come to a clear
+decision about that. If Billy Sutton had done it, or one of McClane's
+chauffeurs, her decision would have been very clear. She would have said
+he was a filthy coward and dismissed him from her mind. But John couldn't
+be dismissed. His funk wasn't like other people's funk. Coupled with his
+ecstatic love of danger it had an unreal, fantastic quality. Somehow she
+couldn't regard his love of danger as an unreal, fantastic thing. It had
+come too near her; it had moved her too profoundly and too long; she had
+shared it as she might have shared his passion.
+
+So that, even in the sharp, waking day she felt his fear as a secret,
+mysterious thing. She couldn't account for it. She didn't, considering
+the circumstances, she didn't judge the imminence of the Germans to be a
+sufficient explanation. It was as incomprehensible to-day as it had been
+yesterday.
+
+But there was fear and fear. There was the cruel, animal fear of the
+Belgians in the plantation, fear that was dark to itself and had no
+sadness in it; and there was John's fear that knew itself and was sad.
+The unbearable, inconsolable sadness of John's fear! After all, you could
+think of him as a gentle thing, caught unaware in a trap and tortured.
+And who was she to judge him? She in her "armour" and he in his coat of
+nerves. His knowledge and his memory of his fear would be like a raw open
+wound in his mind; and her knowledge of it would be a perpetual irritant,
+rubbing against it and keeping up the sore. Last night she hadn't done
+anything to heal him; she had only hurt.... And if she gave John up his
+wound would never heal. She owed a sort of duty to the wound.
+
+Of course, like John, she would go on remembering what had happened
+yesterday. She would never get over it any more than he would. Yet,
+after all, yesterday was only one day out of his life. There might never
+be another like it. And to set against yesterday there was their first
+day at Berlaere and the day afterwards at Melle; there was yesterday
+morning and there was that other day at Melle. She had no business to
+suppose that he had done then what he did yesterday. They had settled
+that once for all at the time, when he said Billy Sutton had told him
+she was going back with him. It all hung on that. If that was right, the
+rest was right....
+
+Supposing Billy hadn't told him anything of the sort, though? She would
+never know that. She couldn't say to Billy: "_Did_ you tell John I was
+going back with you? Because; if you didn't--" She would have to leave
+that as it was, not quite certain.... And she couldn't be quite certain
+whether the boy had been dead or alive. And ... No. She couldn't get over
+it, John's cowardice. It had destroyed the unique, beautiful happiness
+she had had with him.
+
+For it was no use saying that courage, physical courage, didn't count.
+She could remember a long conversation she had had with George Corfield,
+the man who wanted to marry her, about that. He had said courage was the
+least thing you could have. That only meant that, whatever else you
+hadn't, you must have that. It was a sort of trust. You were trusted not
+to betray defenceless things. A coward was a person who betrayed
+defenceless things. George had said that the world's adoration of courage
+was the world's cowardice, its fear of betrayal. That was a question for
+cowards to settle among themselves. The obligation not to betray
+defenceless things remained. It was so simple and obvious that people
+took it for granted; they didn't talk about it. They didn't talk about it
+because it was so deep and sacred, like honour and like love; so that,
+when John had talked about it she had always felt that he was her lover,
+saying the things that other men might not say, things he couldn't have
+said to any other woman.
+
+It was inconceivable that he--It couldn't have happened. As he had said
+of the defeat of Belgium, it was so bad that it couldn't happen. Odd,
+that the other day she had accepted at once a thing she didn't know for
+certain, while now she fought fiercely against a thing she knew; and
+always the memory of it, returning, beat her down.
+
+She had to make up her mind on what terms she would live with it and
+whether she would live with it at all. Supposing it happened again?
+Supposing you had always to go in fear of its happening?... It mightn't
+happen. Funk might be a thing that attacked you like an illness, or like
+drink, in fits, with long, calm intervals between. She wondered what it
+would feel like to be subject to attacks. Perhaps you would recover; you
+would be on the look-out, and when you felt another fit coming on you
+could stave it off or fight it down. And the first time wouldn't count
+because you had had no warning. It wouldn't be fair to give him up
+because of the first time.
+
+He would have given her up, he would have left her to the Germans--Yes;
+but if she broke with him now she would never get beyond that thought,
+she would never get beyond yesterday; she would always see it, the
+flagged road swinging with the swinging bulge of the stretcher, the
+sudden stopping, the Flamand with his wound, the shafts of the stretcher,
+suddenly naked, sticking out; and then all the fantastic, incredible
+movements of John's flight. Her mind would separate from him on that,
+closing everything down, making his act eternal.
+
+And, after all, the Germans hadn't come round the corner. Perhaps he
+wouldn't have left her if they had really come. How did she know what he
+wouldn't have done?
+
+No. That was thin. Thin. She couldn't take herself in quite in that way.
+It was the way she had tried with Gibson Herbert. When he did anything
+she loathed she used to pretend he hadn't done it. But with John, if she
+didn't give him up, her eyes must always be open. Perhaps they would get
+beyond yesterday. Perhaps she would see other things, go on with him to
+something new, forgetting. Her unique, beautiful happiness was smashed.
+Still, there might be some other happiness, beautiful, though not with
+the same beauty.
+
+If John had got the better of his fear--She thought of all the men she
+had ever heard of who had done that, coming out in the end heroic,
+triumphant.
+
+      *       * * * *
+
+Three things, three little things that happened that morning, that showed
+the way his mind was working. Things that she couldn't get over, that she
+would never forget.
+
+John standing on the hospital steps, watching Trixie Rankin and Alice
+Bartrum as they started with the ambulances; the fierce fling of his
+body, turning away.
+
+His voice saying, "I loathe those women. There's Alice Bartrum--I saw her
+making eyes at Sutton over a spouting artery. As for Mrs. Rankin they
+ought to intern her. She oughtn't to be allowed within ten miles of any
+army. That's one thing I like about McClane. He can't stand that sort of
+thing any more than I can."
+
+"How about Gwinnie and me?"
+
+"Gwinnie hangs her beastly legs about all over the place. So do you."
+
+John standing at the foot of the stairs, looking at the Antwerp men.
+Their heads and faces were covered with a white mask of cotton wool like
+a diver's helmet, three small holes in each white mask for mouth and
+eyes. They were the men whose faces had been burned by fire at Antwerp.
+
+"Come away," she said. But he still stood, fascinated, hypnotised by the
+white masks.
+
+"If I were to stick there, doing nothing, looking at the wounded, I
+should go off my head."
+
+"My God! So should I. Those everlasting wounds. They make you dream
+about them. Disgusting dreams. I never really see the wound, but I'm
+just going to see it. I know it's going to be more horrible than any
+wound I've ever seen. And then I wake.... That's why I don't look at
+them more than I can help."
+
+"You're looking at them now," she said.
+
+"Oh, them. That's nothing. Cotton wool."
+
+And she, putting her hand on his arm to draw him up the stairs, away.
+John shaking her hands off and his queer voice rising. "I wish you
+wouldn't do that, Charlotte. You know I hate it."
+
+He had never said anything to her like that before. It hadn't struck her
+before that, changed to himself, he would change to her. He hadn't got
+over last night. She had hurt him; her knowledge of his cowardice hurt
+him; and this was how he showed his pain.
+
+She thought: Here's Antwerp falling and Belgium beaten. And all those
+wounded. And the dead.... And here am I, bothering about these little
+things, as if they mattered. Three little things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fire from the battlefield had raked the village street as they came
+in; but it had ceased now. The cure had been through it all, going up and
+down, helping with the stretchers. John was down there in the wine-shop,
+where the soldiers were, looking for more wounded.
+
+They had found five in the stable yard, waiting to be taken away; they
+had moved four of them into the ambulance. The fifth, shot through the
+back of his head, still lay on the ground on a stretcher that dripped
+blood. Charlotte stood beside him.
+
+The cure came to her there. He was slender and lean in his black cassock.
+He had a Red Cross brassard on his sleeve, and in one hand he carried his
+missal and in the other the Host and the holy oils in a little bag of
+purple silk. He looked down at the stretcher and he looked at Charlotte,
+smiling faintly.
+
+"Where is Monsieur?" he said.
+
+"In the wine-shop, looking for wounded."
+
+She thought: He isn't looking, for them. He's skulking there, out of the
+firing. He'll always be like that.
+
+It had begun again. The bullets whistled in the air and rapped on the
+stone causeway, and ceased. The cure glanced down the street towards the
+place they had come from and smiled again.
+
+She liked his lean dark face and the long lines that came in it when it
+smiled. It despised the firing, it despised death, it despised everything
+that could be done to him there. And it was utterly compassionate.
+
+"Then," he said, "it is for you and me to carry him, Mademoiselle." He
+stooped to the stretcher.
+
+Between them they lifted him very slowly and gently into the ambulance.
+
+"There, Monsieur, at the bottom."
+
+At the bottom because of the steady drip, drip, that no bandaging could
+staunch. He lay straight and stiff, utterly unconcerned, and his feet in
+their enormous boots, slightly parted, stuck out beyond the stretcher.
+The four others sat in a row down one side of the car and stared at him.
+
+The cure climbed in after him, carrying the Host. He knelt there,
+where the blood from the smashed head oozed through the bandages and
+through the canvas of the stretchers to the floor and to the skirts of
+his cassock.
+
+The Last Sacrament. Charlotte waited till it was over, standing stolidly
+by the tail of the car. She could have cried then because of the sheer
+beauty of the cure's act, even while she wondered whether perhaps the
+wafer on his tongue might not choke the dying man.
+
+The cure hovered on the edge of the car, stooping with a certain
+awkwardness; she took from him his missal and his purple bag as he
+gathered his cassock about him and came down.
+
+"Can I do anything, Monsieur?"
+
+"No, Mademoiselle. It _is_ done."
+
+His eyes smiled at her; but his lips were quivering as he took again
+his missal and his purple bag. She watched him going on slowly down the
+street till he turned into the wine-shop. She wondered: Had he seen?
+Did he know why John was there? In another minute John came out,
+hurrying to the car.
+
+He glanced down at the blood stains by the back step; then he looked in;
+and when he saw the man lying on the stretcher he turned on her in fury.
+
+"What are you thinking of? I told you you weren't to take him."
+
+"I had to. I couldn't leave him there. I thought--"
+
+"You've no business to think."
+
+"Well, but the cure--"
+
+"The cure doesn't know anything about it."
+
+"I don't care. If he's in a clean bed--if they take his boots off--"
+
+"I told you they can't spare clean beds for corpses. He'll be dead before
+you can get him there."
+
+"Not if we're quick."
+
+"Nonsense. We must get him out of that."
+
+He seized the handle of the stretcher and began pulling; she hung on to
+his arm and stopped that.
+
+"No. No," she said. "You shan't touch him."
+
+He flung her arm off and turned. "You fool," he said. "You fool."
+
+She looked at him steadily, a long look that remembered, that made
+him remember.
+
+"There isn't time," she said. "They'll begin _firing_ in another minute."
+
+"Damn you." But he had turned, slinking round the corner of the hood to
+the engine. While he cranked it up she thought of the kit that one of the
+men had left there in the yard. She made a dash and fetched it, and as
+she threw it on the floor the car started. She snatched at the rope and
+swung herself up on to the step. The dying man lay behind her, straight
+and stiff; his feet in their heavy boots stuck out close under her hand.
+
+The four men nodded and grinned at her. They protected her. They
+understood.
+
+If only she could get him into a clean bed. If only she had had time
+to take his boots off. It would be all right if only she could bring
+him in alive.
+
+He was still alive when they got into Ghent.
+
+She had forgotten John and it was not until they came to take out the
+stretcher that she was again aware of him. They had drawn up before the
+steps of the hospital; he had got down and was leaning sideways, staring
+under the stretcher.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You can see what it is. Blood."
+
+From the hole in the man's head, through the soaked bandages, it still
+dripped, dripped with a light sound; it had made a glairy pool on the
+floor of the ambulance.
+
+"Don't look at it," she said. "It'll make you sick. You know you can't
+stand it."
+
+"Oh. I can't _stand_ it, can't I?"
+
+He straightened himself. He threw back his head; his upper lip lifted,
+stretched tight and thin above the clean white teeth. His eyes looked
+down at her, narrowed, bright slits under dropped lids.
+
+"John--I want to get him in before he dies."
+
+"All right. Get in under there. Take his head."
+
+"Hadn't I better take his feet?"
+
+"You'd better take what you're told to."
+
+She stiffened to the weight, heaved up her shoulder. Two men came running
+down the steps to help her as John pulled.
+
+"They'll be glad," he said, "to see him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was in the yard of the hospital, swabbing out the car, when John
+came to her.
+
+The back and side of the hospital, the long barracks of the annex and the
+wall at the bottom enclosed a waste place of ochreish clay. A long wooden
+shed, straw-white and new, was built out under the red brick of the
+annex. She thought it was a garage. John came out of the door of the
+shed. He beckoned to her as he came.
+
+"Come here," he said. "I want to show you something."
+
+They went close together, John gripping her arm, in the old way, to steer
+her. As they came to the long wall of the shed his eyes slewed round and
+looked at her out of their corners. She had seen that sidelong, attentive
+look once before, when she was a little girl, in the eyes of a schoolboy
+who had taken her away and told her something horrid. The door of the
+shed stood ajar. John half led, half pushed her in.
+
+"Look there--" he said.
+
+The dead men were laid out in a row, on their backs; greyish-white,
+sallow-white faces upturned; bodies straight and stiff on a thin litter
+of straw. Pale grey light hovered, filtered through dust.
+
+It came from some clearer place of glass beyond that might have been a
+carpenter's shop, partitioned off. She couldn't see what was going on
+there. She didn't see anything but the dead bodies, the dead faces, and
+John's living face.
+
+He leaned against the wall; his head was thrown back, his eyes moved
+glistening under the calm lids; the corners of his mouth and the wings of
+his nostrils were lifted as he laughed: a soft, thin laugh breathed out
+between the edges of his teeth. He pointed.
+
+"There's your man. Shows how much they wanted him, doesn't it?"
+
+He lay there, the last comer, in his uniform and bloody bandages, his
+stiff, peaked mouth open, his legs stretched apart as they had sprung in
+his last agony.
+
+"Oh, John--"
+
+She cried out in her fright and put her hands over her eyes. She had
+always been afraid of the dead bodies. She didn't want to know where they
+put them, and nobody told her.
+
+John gripped her wrists so that he hurt her and dragged down her hands.
+He looked into her eyes, still laughing.
+
+"I thought you weren't afraid of anything," he said.
+
+"I'm not afraid when we're out there. I'm only afraid of _seeing_ them.
+You know I am."
+
+She turned, but he had put himself between her and the door. She wrenched
+at the latch, sobbing.
+
+"How could you be so _cruel?_ What did you do it for? What did you
+_do_ it for?"
+
+"I wanted you to see what they've done with him. There's his clean bed.
+They haven't even taken his boots off."
+
+"You brute. You _utter_ brute!"
+
+A steely sound like a dropped hammer came from behind the glass
+partition; then the sliding of a latch. John opened the door a little way
+and she slipped out past him.
+
+"_Next time_," he said, "perhaps you'll do as you're told."
+
+She wanted to get away by herself. Not into her own room, where Gwinnie,
+who had been unloading ambulance trains half the night, now rested. The
+McClane Corps was crowding into the messroom for tea. She passed through
+without looking at any of them and out to the balcony, closing the French
+window behind her. She could hide there beyond the window where the wall
+was blank.
+
+She leaned back, flattening herself against the wall....
+
+Something would have to be done. They couldn't go on like this.... Her
+mind went to and fro, quickly, with short jerky movements, distressed; it
+had to do so much thinking in so short a time.
+
+She would always have to reckon with John's fear. And John's fear was not
+what she had thought it, a sad, helpless, fatal thing, sad because it
+knew itself doom-like and helpless. It was cruel, with a sort of mental
+violence in it, worse than the cruel animal fear of the men in the
+plantation. She could see that his cowardice had something to do with his
+cruelty and that his cruelty was somehow linked up with his cowardice;
+but she couldn't for the life of her imagine the secret of the bond. She
+only felt that it would be something secret and horrible; something that
+she would rather not know about.
+
+And she knew that since yesterday he had left off caring for her. His
+love had died a sudden, cruel and violent death. His cowardice had done
+that too.... And he had left off caring for the wounded. It was almost as
+if he hated them, because they lay so still, keeping him back, keeping
+him out under the fire.
+
+Queer, but all those other cowardly things that he had done had seemed to
+her unreal even when she had seen him doing them; and afterwards when she
+thought about them they were unreal, as if they hadn't happened, as if
+she had just imagined them. Incredible, and yet the sort of thing you
+_could_ imagine if you tried. But that last devilish thing he did, it had
+a hard, absolute reality. Just because it was inconceivable, because you
+couldn't have imagined it, you couldn't doubt that it had happened.
+
+It was happening now. As long as she lived it would go on happening in
+her mind. She would never get away from it.
+
+There were things that men did, bestial things, cruel things, things they
+did to women. But not things like this. They _didn't_ think of them,
+because this thing wasn't thinkable.
+
+Why had John done it? Why? She supposed he wanted to hurt her and
+frighten her because he had been hurt, because he had been frightened.
+And because he knew she loved her wounded men. Perhaps he wanted to make
+her hate him and have done with it.
+
+Well, she did hate him. Oh, yes, she hated him.
+
+She heard the window open and shut and a woman's footsteps swishing on
+the stone floor. Trixie Rankin came to her, with her quick look that fell
+on you like a bird swooping. She stood facing her, upright and stiff in
+her sharp beauty; her lips were pressed together as though they had just
+closed on some biting utterance; but her eyes were soft and intent.
+
+"What's he done this time?" she said.
+
+"He hasn't done anything."
+
+"Oh yes, he has. He's done something perfectly beastly."
+
+It was no use lying to Trixie. She knew what he was like, even if she
+didn't know about yesterday, even if she didn't know what he had done
+now. Nobody could know that. She looked straight at Trixie, with broad,
+open eyes that defied her to know.
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Your face."
+
+"Damn my face. It's got nothing to do with you, Trixie."
+
+"Yes it has. If it gives the show away I can't help seeing, can I?"
+
+"You can help talking."
+
+"Yes, I can help talking."
+
+The arrogance had gone out of her face. It could change in a minute from
+the face of a bird of prey to the face of a watching angel. It looked at
+her as it looked at wounded men: tender and protective. But Trixie
+couldn't see that you didn't want any tenderness and protection just
+then, or any recognition of your wound.
+
+"You rum little blighter," she said. "Come along. Nobody's going to
+talk."
+
+There was a stir as Charlotte went in; people shifting their places to
+make room for her; McClane calling out to her to come and sit by him;
+Alice Bartrum making sweet eyes; the men getting up and cutting bread and
+butter and reaching for her cup to give it her. She could see they were
+all determined to be nice, to show her what they thought of her; they had
+sent Trixie to bring her in. There was something a little deliberate
+about it and exaggerated. They were getting it up--a demonstration in her
+favour, a demonstration against John Conway.
+
+She talked; but her thoughts ran by themselves on a line separate from
+her speech.
+
+"We got in six wounded." ... "That cure was there again. He was
+splendid." ... They didn't know anything. They condemned him on the
+evidence of her face, the face she had brought back to them, coming
+straight from John. Her face had the mark of what he had done to
+her.... "Much firing? Not so very much." ... She remembered what he had
+said to her about her face. "Something's happened to it. Some cruelty.
+Some damnable cruelty...."
+
+"We'll have to go out there again."
+
+They were all listening, and Alice Bartrum had made fresh tea for her;
+McClane was setting down her cup. She was thirsty; she longed for the
+fresh, fragrant tea; she was soothed by the kind, listening faces.
+Suddenly they drew away; they weren't listening any more. John had come
+into the room.
+
+It flashed on her that all these people thought that John was her lover,
+her lover in the way they understood love. They were looking at him as if
+they hated him. But John's face was quiet and composed and somehow
+triumphant; it held itself up against all the hostile faces; it fronted
+McClane and his men as their equal; it was the face of a man who has
+satisfied a lust. His whole body had a look of assurance and
+accomplishment, as if his cruelty had given him power.
+
+And with it all he kept his dreadful beauty. It hurt her to look at him.
+
+She rose, leaving her tea untasted, and went out of the room. She
+couldn't sit there with him. She had given him up. Her horror of him was
+pure, absolute. It would never return on itself to know pity or remorse.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+And the next day, as if nothing had happened, he was excited and eager to
+set out. He could sleep off his funk in the night, like drink, and get up
+in the morning as if it had never been. He was more immune from memory
+than any drunkard. He woke to his romance as a child wakes to the renewed
+wonder of the world. It was so real to him that, however hardly you
+judged him, you couldn't think of him as a humbug or a hypocrite.... No.
+He was not that. He was not that. His mind truly lived in a glorious
+state for which none of his disgraceful deeds were ever done. It created
+a sort of innocence for him. She could forgive him (even after
+yesterday), she could almost believe in him again when she saw him coming
+down the hall to the ambulance with his head raised and his eyes shining,
+gallant and keen.
+
+They were to go to Berlaere. Trixie Rankin had gone on before them with
+Gurney, McClane's best chauffeur. McClane and Sutton were at Melle.
+
+They had not been to Berlaere since that day, the first time they had
+gone out together. That time at least had been perfect; it remained
+secure; nothing could ever spoil it; she could remember the delight of
+it, their strange communion of ecstasy, without doubt, without misgiving.
+You could never forget. It might have been better if you could, instead
+of knowing that it would exist in you forever, to torment you by its
+unlikeness to the days, the awful, incredible days that had come
+afterwards. There was no way of thinking that John had been more real
+that day than he had been yesterday. She was simply left with the
+inscrutable mystery of him on her hands. But she could see clearly that
+he was more real to himself. Yesterday and the day before had ceased to
+exist for him. He was back in his old self.
+
+There was only one sign of memory that he gave. He was no longer her
+lover; he no longer recognised her even as his comrade. He was her
+commandant. It was his place to command, and hers to be commanded. He
+looked at her, when he looked at her at all, with a stern coldness. She
+was a woman who had committed some grave fault, whom he no longer
+trusted. So masterly was his playing of this part, so great, in a way,
+was still his power over her, that there were moments when she almost
+believed in the illusion he created. She had committed some grave fault.
+She was not worthy of his trust. Somewhere, at some time forgotten, in
+some obscure and secret way, she had betrayed him.
+
+She had so mixed her hidden self with his in love that even now, with all
+her knowledge of him, she couldn't help feeling the thing as he felt it
+and seeing as he saw. Her mind kept on passing in and out of the illusion
+with little shocks of astonishment.
+
+And yet all the time she was acutely aware of the difference. When she
+went out with him she felt that she was going with something dangerous
+and uncertain. She knew what fear was now. She was afraid all the time of
+what he would do next, of what he would not do. Her wounded were not safe
+with him. Nothing was safe.
+
+She wished that she could have gone out with Billy; with Billy there
+wouldn't be any excitement, but neither would there be this abominable
+fear. On the other hand you couldn't let anybody else take the risk of
+John; and you couldn't, you simply couldn't let him go alone. Conceive
+him going alone--the things that might happen; she could at least see
+that some things didn't.
+
+It was odd, but John had never shown the smallest desire to go without
+her. If he hadn't liked it he could easily have taken Sutton or Gwinnie
+or one of the McClane men. It was as if, in spite of his hostility, he
+still felt, as he had said, that where she was everything would be right.
+
+And it looked as if this time nothing could go wrong. When they came into
+the village the firing had stopped; it was concentrating further east
+towards Zele. Trixie's ambulance was packed, and Trixie was excited and
+triumphant.
+
+Her gestures waved them back as useless, much too late; without them she
+had got in all the wounded. But in the end they took over two of them,
+slight cases that Trixie resigned without a pang. She had had to turn
+them out to make room for poor Gurney, the chauffeur, who had hurt
+himself, ruptured something, slipping on a muddy bank with his stretcher.
+
+Mr. Conway, she said, could drive her back to Ghent and Charlotte could
+follow with the two men. She had settled it all, in her bright,
+domineering way, in a second, and now swung herself up on the back step
+of her car.
+
+They had got round the turn of the village and Charlotte was starting to
+follow them when she heard them draw up. In another minute John appeared,
+walking back slowly down the street with a young Belgian lieutenant. They
+were talking earnestly together. So soon as Charlotte saw the lieutenant
+she had a sense of something happening, something fatal, that would
+change Trixie's safe, easy programme. John as he came on looked perturbed
+and thoughtful. They stopped. The lieutenant was saying something final.
+John nodded assent and saluted. The lieutenant sketched a salute and
+hurried away in the opposite direction.
+
+John waited till he was well out of sight before he came to her. (She
+noticed that.) He had the look at first of being up to something, as if
+the devil of yesterday was with him still.
+
+It passed. His voice had no devil in it. "I say, I've got a job for you,
+Charlotte. Something you'll like."
+
+There was no devil in his voice, but he stared away from her as he spoke.
+
+"I don't want you to go to Ghent. I want you to go on to Zele."
+
+"Zele? Do I know the way?"
+
+"It's quite easy. You turn round and go the way we went that first
+day--you remember? It's the shortest cut from here."
+
+"Pretty bad going though. Hadn't we better go on and strike the
+main road?"
+
+"Yes, if you want to go miles round and get held up by the transport."
+
+"All right--if we can get through."
+
+"You'll get through all right." His voice had the tone of finality.
+
+"I'm to go by myself then?"
+
+"Well--if I've got to drive Mrs. Rankin--"
+
+She thought: It's going to be dangerous.
+
+"By the way, I haven't told her I'm sending you. You don't want her
+butting in and going with you."
+
+"No. I certainly don't want Trixie.... And look here, I don't
+particularly want those men. Much better leave them here where they're
+safe and send in again for them."
+
+"I don't know that I _can_ send in again. We're supposed to have finished
+this job. The cars may be wanted for anything. _They'll_ be all right."
+
+"I don't _like_ taking them."
+
+"You're making difficulties," he said. He was irritable and hurried; he
+had kept on turning and looking up the street as though he thought the
+lieutenant might appear again at any minute.
+
+"When _will_ you learn that you've simply got to obey orders?"
+
+"All right."
+
+She hadn't a chance with him. Whatever she said and did he could always
+bring it round to that, her orders. She thought she knew what _his_
+orders had been.
+
+He cranked up the engine. She could see him stooping and rising to it, a
+rhythmic, elastic movement; he was cranking energetically, with a sort of
+furious, flushed enjoyment of his power.
+
+She backed and turned and he ran forward with her as she started. He
+shouted "Don't think about the main road. Get through.... And hurry _up_.
+You haven't got too much time."
+
+She knew. It was going to be dangerous and he funked it. He hadn't got to
+drive Trixie into Ghent. When the worst came to the worst Trixie could
+drive herself. She thought: He didn't tell her because he daren't. He
+knew she wouldn't let him send me by myself. She'd _make_ him go. She'd
+stand over him and bully him till he had to.
+
+Still, she could do it. She could get through. Going by herself was
+better than going with a man who funked it. Only she would have liked it
+better without the two wounded men. She thought of them, jostled, falling
+against each other, falling forward and recovering, shaken by the jolting
+of the car, and perhaps brought back into danger. She suspected that not
+having too much time might be the essence of the risk.
+
+Everything was quiet as they ran along the open road from the village to
+the hamlet that sat low and humble on the edge of the fields. A few
+houses and the long wall of the barn still stood; but by this time the
+house she had brought the guns from had the whole of its roof knocked in,
+and the stripped gable at the end of the row no longer pricked up its
+point against the sky; the front of the hollow shell had fallen forward
+and flung itself across the road.
+
+For a moment she thought the way was blocked. She thought: If I can't get
+round I must get over. She backed, charged, and the car, rocking a
+little, struggled through. And there, where the road swerved slightly,
+the high wall of a barn, undermined, bulged forward, toppling. It
+answered the vibration of the car with a visible tremor. So soon as she
+passed it fell with a great crash and rumbling and sprawled in a smoky
+heap that blocked her way behind her.
+
+After that they went through quiet country for a time, but further east,
+near the town, the shelling began. The road here was opened up into great
+holes with ragged, hollow edges; she had to skirt them carefully, and
+sometimes there would not be enough clear ground to move in, and one
+wheel of the car would go unsupported, hanging over space.
+
+Yet she had got through.
+
+As she came into Zele she met the last straggling line of the refugees.
+They cried out to her not to go on. She thought: I must get those men
+before the retreat begins.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Returning with her heavy load of wounded, on the pitch-black road,
+half way to Ghent she was halted. She had come up with the tail end of
+the retreat.
+
+       *       * * * *
+
+Trixie Rankin stood on the hospital steps looking out. The car turned in
+and swung up the rubber incline, but instead of stopping before the porch
+it ran on towards the downward slope. Charlotte jammed on the brakes with
+a hard jerk and backed to the level.
+
+She couldn't think how she had let the car do that. She couldn't think
+why she was slipping from the edge of it into Trixie's arms. And
+stumbling in that ignominious way on the steps with Trixie holding her up
+on one side.... It didn't last. After she had drunk the hot black coffee
+that Alice Bartrum gave her she was all right.
+
+The men had gone out of the messroom, leaving them alone.
+
+"I'm all right, Trixie, only a bit tired."
+
+"Tired? I should think you _were_ tired. That Conway man's a perfect
+devil. Fancy scooting back himself on a safe trip and sending you out to
+Zele. _Zele_!"
+
+"McClane doesn't care much where he sends _you_."
+
+"Oh, Mac--As if he could stop us. But he'd draw the line at Zele, with
+the Germans coming into it."
+
+"Rot. They weren't coming in for hours and hours."
+
+"Well, anyhow he thought they were."
+
+"He didn't think anything about it. I wanted to go and I went. He--he
+couldn't stop me."
+
+"It's no good lying to me, Charlotte. I know too much. I know he had
+orders to go to Zele himself and the damned coward funked it. I've a good
+mind to report him to Head Quarters."
+
+"No. You won't do that. You wouldn't be such a putrid beast."
+
+"If I don't, Charlotte, it's because I like you. You're the pluckiest
+little blighter in the world. But I'll tell you what I _shall_ do. Next
+time your Mr. Conway's ordered on a job he doesn't fancy I'll go with him
+and hold his nose down to it by the scruff of his neck. If he was _my_
+man I'd bloody well tell him what I thought of him."
+
+"It doesn't matter what you think of him. You were pretty well gone on
+him yourself once."
+
+"When? When?"
+
+"When you wanted to turn Mac out and make him commandant."
+
+"Oh, _then_--I was a jolly fool to be taken in by him. So were you."
+
+She stopped on her way to the door. "I admit he _looks_ everything he
+isn't. But that only shows what a beastly humbug the man is."
+
+"No. He isn't a humbug. He really likes going out even if he can't stand
+it when he gets there."
+
+"I've no use for that sort of courage."
+
+"It isn't courage. But it isn't humbug."
+
+"I've no use for your fine distinctions either."
+
+She heard Alice Bartrum's voice calling to Trixie as she went out, "It's
+jolly decent of her not to go back on him."
+
+The voice went on. "You needn't mind what Trixie says about cold
+feet. She's said it about everybody. About Sutton and Mac, and all
+our men, and me."
+
+She thought: What's the good of lying when they all know? Still, there
+were things they wouldn't know if she kept on lying, things they would
+never guess.
+
+"Trixie doesn't know anything about him," she said. "No more do you. You
+don't know what he _was_."
+
+"Whatever he _is_, whatever he's done, Charlotte, you mustn't let it hurt
+you. It hasn't anything to do with you. We all know what _you_ are."
+
+"Me? I'm not bothering about myself. I tell you it's not what _you_ think
+about him, it's what _I_ think."
+
+"Yes," said Alice Bartrum. Then Gwinnie Denning and John Conway came in
+and she left them.
+
+John carried himself very straight, and again Charlotte saw about him
+that odd look of accomplishment and satisfaction.
+
+"So you got through?" he said.
+
+"Yes. I got through." They kept their eyes from each other as they spoke.
+
+Gwinnie struck in, "Are you all right?"
+
+"Yes, rather.... The little Belgian Army doctor was there. He was
+adorable, sticking on, working away with his wounded, in a sort of
+heavenly peace, with the Germans just outside."
+
+"How many did you get?"
+
+"Eleven--Thirteen."
+
+"Oh good.... I've the rottenest luck. I'd have given my head to have gone
+with you."
+
+"I'm glad you didn't. It wasn't what you'd call a lady's tea-party."
+
+"Who wants a lady's tea-party? I ought to have gone in with the Mac
+Corps. Then I'd have had a chance."
+
+"Not this time. Mac draws the line somewhere.... Look here, Gwinnie, I
+wish you'd clear out a minute and let me talk to John."
+
+Gwinnie went, grumbling.
+
+For a moment silence came down between them. John was drinking coffee
+with an air of being alone in the room, pretending that he hadn't heard
+and didn't see her.
+
+"John--I didn't mind driving that car. I knew I could do it and I did it.
+I won't say I didn't mind the shelling, because I did. Still, shelling's
+all in the day's work. And I didn't mind your sending me, because I'd
+rather have gone myself than let you go. I don't want you to be killed.
+Somehow that's still the one thing I couldn't bear. But if you'd sent
+Gwinnie I'd have killed you."
+
+"I didn't send Gwinnie. I gave you your chance. I knew you wanted to cut
+Mrs. Rankin out."
+
+"I? I never thought of such a rotten thing."
+
+"Well, you talked about danger as if you liked it."
+
+"So did you."
+
+"Oh--_go_ to hell."
+
+"I've just come from there."
+
+"Oh--so you were frightened, were you?"
+
+"Yes, I was horribly frightened. I had thirteen wounded men with me. What
+do you suppose it feels like, driving a heavy ambulance car by yourself?
+You can't sit in front and steer and look after thirteen wounded men at
+the same time. I had to keep hopping in and out. That isn't nice when
+there's shells about. I shall never forgive you for not coming to give a
+hand with those men. There's funk you can forgive and--"
+
+She thought: "It's John--John--I'm saying these disgusting things to.
+I'm as bad as Trixie, telling him what I bloody well think of him, going
+back on him."
+
+"And there's funk--"
+
+"You'd better take care, Charlotte. Do you know I could get you fired out
+of Belgium to-morrow?"
+
+"Not after to-night, I think." (It was horrible.)
+
+He got up and opened the door. "Anyhow, you'll clear out of this room
+now, damn you."
+
+"I wish you'd heard that Army doctor damning _you_."
+
+"Why didn't he go back with you himself, then?"
+
+"_He_ couldn't leave his wounded."
+
+He slammed the door hard behind her.
+
+That was just like him. Wounded men everywhere, trying to sleep, and he
+slammed doors. He didn't care.
+
+She would have to go on lying. She had made up her mind to that. So long
+as it would keep the others from knowing, so long as John's awfulness
+went beyond their knowledge, so long as it would do any good to John, she
+would lie.
+
+Her time had come. She remembered saying that. She could hear herself
+talking to John at Barrow Hill Farm: "Everybody's got their breaking
+point.... I daresay when my time comes I shall funk and lie."
+
+Well, didn't she? Funk--the everlasting funk of wondering what John would
+do next; and lying, lying at every turn to save him. _He_ was her
+breaking point.
+
+She had lied, the first time they went out, about the firing. She
+wondered whether she had done it because then, even then, she had been
+afraid of his fear. Hadn't she always somehow, in secret, been afraid?
+She could see the car coming round the corner by the Church in the narrow
+street at Stow, she could feel it grazing her thigh, and John letting her
+go, jumping safe to the curb. She had pretended that it hadn't happened.
+
+But that first day--No. He had been brave then. She had only lied because
+she was afraid he would worry about her.... Brave then. Could war tire
+you and wear you down, and change you from yourself? In two weeks? Change
+him so that she had to hate him!
+
+Half the night she lay awake wondering: Do I hate him because he doesn't
+care about me? Or because he doesn't care about the wounded? She could
+see all their faces: the face of the wounded man at Melle (_he_ had
+crawled out on his hands and knees to look for her); the face of the dead
+boy who hadn't died when John left him; the Flamand they brought from
+Lokeren, lying in the road; the face of the dead man in the shed--And
+John's face.
+
+How could you care for a thing like that? How could you want a thing like
+that to care for you?
+
+And she? She didn't matter. Nothing mattered in all the world but Them.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+It was Saturday, the tenth of October, the day after the fall of Antwerp.
+The Germans were pressing closer round Ghent; they might march in any
+day. She had been in Belgium a hundred years; she had lived a hundred
+years under this doom.
+
+But at last she was free of John. Utterly free. His mind would have no
+power over her any more. Nor yet his body. She was glad that he had not
+been her lover. Supposing her body had been bound to him so that it
+couldn't get away? The struggle had been hard enough when her first flash
+came to her; and when she had fought against her knowledge and denied it,
+unable to face the truth that did violence to her passion; and when she
+had given him up and was left with just that, the beauty of his body, and
+it had hurt her to look at him.
+
+Oh well, nothing could hurt her now. And anyhow she would get through
+to-day without being afraid of what might happen. John couldn't do
+anything awful; he had been ordered on an absolutely safe expedition,
+taking medical stores to the convent hospital at Bruges and convoying
+Gurney, the sick chauffeur, to Ostend for England. Charlotte was to go
+out with Sutton, and Gwinnie was to take poor Gurney's place. She was
+glad she was going with Billy. Whatever happened Billy would go through
+it without caring, his mind fixed on the solid work.
+
+And John, for an hour before he started, had been going about in gloom,
+talking of death. _His_ death.
+
+They were looking over the last letter from his father which he had asked
+her to answer for him. It seemed that John had told him the chances were
+he would be killed and had asked him whether in this case he would allow
+the Roden ambulances to be handed over to McClane. And the old man had
+given his consent.
+
+"Isn't it a pity to frighten him?" she said.
+
+"He's no business to be frightened. It's _my_ death. If I can face it, he
+can. I'm simply making necessary arrangements."
+
+She could see that. At the same time it struck her that he wanted you to
+see that he exposed himself to all the risks of death, to see how he
+faced it. She had no patience with that talk about death; that pitiful
+bolstering up of his romance.
+
+"If McClane says much more you can tell him."
+
+He was counting on this transfer of the ambulances to get credit with
+McClane; to silence him.
+
+There were other letters which he had told her to answer. As soon as he
+had started she went into his room to look for them. If they were not on
+the chimneypiece they would be in the drawer with his razors and
+pockethandkerchiefs.
+
+It was John's room, after she had gone through it, that showed her what
+he was doing.
+
+Sutton looked in before she had finished. She called to him, "Billy, you
+might come here a minute."
+
+He came in, eyebrows lifted at the inquisition.
+
+"What's up?"
+
+"I'm afraid John isn't coming back."
+
+"Not coming back? Of course he's coming back."
+
+"No. I think he's--got off."
+
+"You mean he's--"
+
+"Yes. Bolted."
+
+"What on earth makes you think that?"
+
+"He's taken all sorts of things--pyjamas, razors, all his
+pockethandkerchiefs... I _had_ to look through his drawers to find those
+letters he told me to answer."
+
+Sutton had gone through into the slip of white tiled lavatory beyond. She
+followed him.
+
+"My God," he said, "yes. He's taken his toothbrush and his sleeping
+draught.... You know he tried to get leave yesterday and they wouldn't
+give it him?"
+
+"No. That makes it simply awful."
+
+"Pretty awful."
+
+"Billy--we must get him back."
+
+"I--I don't know about that. He isn't much good, is he? I think we'd
+better let him go."
+
+"Don't you see how awful it'll be for the Corps?"
+
+"The Corps? Does that matter? McClane would take us all on to-morrow."
+
+"I mean for _us_. You and me and Gwinnie. He's our Corps, and we're it."
+
+"Sharlie--with the Germans coming into Ghent do you honestly believe
+anybody'll remember what he did or didn't do?"
+
+"Yes. We're going to stick on with the Belgian Army. It'll be remembered
+against _us_. Besides, it'll kill his father."
+
+"He'll do that any way. He's rotten through and through."
+
+"No. He was splendid in the beginning. He might be splendid some day
+again. But if we let him go off and do this he's done for."
+
+"He's done for anyhow. Isn't it better to recognize that he's rotten?
+McClane wouldn't have him. He saw what he was."
+
+"He didn't see him at Berlaere. He _was_ splendid there."
+
+"My dear child, don't you know why? He didn't see there was any danger.
+He was too stupid to see it."
+
+"I saw it."
+
+"You're not stupid."
+
+"He did see it at the end."
+
+"At the end, yes--When he let you go back for the guns."
+
+She remembered. She remembered his face, the little beads of sweat
+glittering. He couldn't help that.
+
+"Look here, from the time he realised the danger, did he go out or did he
+stay under cover?"
+
+She didn't answer.
+
+"There," he said, "you see."
+
+"Oh, Billy, won't you leave him one shred?"
+
+"No. Not one shred."
+
+Yet, even now, if he could only be splendid--If he could only be it! Why
+shouldn't Billy leave him one shred? After all, he didn't know all the
+awful things John had done; and she would never tell him.... He did know
+two things, the two things she didn't know. She had got to know them. The
+desire that urged her to the completion of her knowledge pursued her now.
+She would possess him in her mind if in no other way.
+
+"Billy--do you remember that day at Melle, when John lost me? Did you
+tell him I was going back with you?"
+
+"No. I didn't."
+
+Then he _had_ left her. And he had lied to both of them.
+
+"Was the boy dead or alive when he left him?"
+
+"He was alive all right. We could have saved him."
+
+He had died--he had died of fright, then.
+
+"You _said_ he was dead."
+
+"I know I did. I lied."
+
+"... And before that--when he was with you and Trixie on that
+battlefield--Did he--"
+
+"Yes. Then, too ... You see there aren't any shreds. The only thing you
+can say is he can't help it. Nobody'd have been hard on him if he hadn't
+gassed so much about danger."
+
+"That's the part you can't understand.... But, Billy, why did you lie
+about him?"
+
+"Because I didn't want you to know, then. I knew it would hurt you, I
+knew it would hurt you more than anything else."
+
+"That was rather wonderful of you."
+
+"Wasn't wonderful at all. I knew because what _you_ think, what _you_
+feel, matters more to me than anything else. Except perhaps my job. I
+have to keep that separate."
+
+Her mind slid over that, not caring, returning to the object of
+its interest.
+
+"Look here, Billy, you may be right. It probably doesn't matter to us.
+But it'll be perfectly awful for him."
+
+"They can't do anything to him, Sharlie."
+
+"It's what he'll do to himself."
+
+"Suicide? Not he."
+
+"I don't mean that. Can't you see that when he gets away to England,
+safe, and the funk settles down he'll start romancing all over again.
+He'll see the whole war again like that; and then he'll remember what
+he's done. He'll have to live all his life remembering...."
+
+"He won't. _You'll_ remember--_You'll_ suffer. You're feeling the shame
+he ought to feel and doesn't."
+
+"Well, somebody's got to feel it.... And he'll feel it too. He won't be
+let off. As long as he lives he'll remember.... I don't want him to have
+that suffering."
+
+"He's brought it on himself, Sharlie."
+
+"I don't care. I don't want him to have it. I couldn't bear it if he
+got away."
+
+"Of course, if you're going to be unhappy about it--"
+
+"The only thing is, can we go after him? Can we spare a car?"
+
+"Well yes, I can manage that all right. The fact is, the Germans may
+really be in to-morrow or Monday, and we're thinking of evacuating all
+the British wounded to-day. There are some men here that we ought to take
+to Ostend. I've been talking to the President about it."
+
+And in the end they went with their wounded, less than an hour after John
+had started.
+
+"I don't say I'll bring him back," said Sutton. "But at any rate we can
+find out what he's up to." He meditated.... "We mayn't have to bring him.
+I shouldn't wonder if he came back on his own. He's like that. He can't
+stand danger yet he keeps on coming back to it. Can't leave it alone."
+
+"I know. He isn't quite an ordinary coward."
+
+"I'm not sure. I've known chaps like that. Can't keep away from
+the thing."
+
+But she stuck to it. John's cowardice was not like other people's
+cowardice. Other cowards going into danger had the imagination of horror.
+He had nothing but the imagination of romantic delight. It was the
+reality that became too much for him. He was either too stupid, or too
+securely wrapped up in his dream to reckon with reality. It surprised him
+every time. And he had no imaginative fear of fear. His fear must have
+surprised him.
+
+"He'll have got away from Bruges," she said.
+
+"I don't think so. He'll have to put up at the Convent for a bit, to let
+Gurney rest."
+
+They had missed the Convent and were running down a narrow street towards
+the Market Place when they found John. He came on across a white bridge
+over a canal at the bottom. He was escorted by some Belgian women,
+dressed in black; they were talking and pointing up the street.
+
+He said he had been to lunch in the town and had lost himself there and
+they were showing him the way back to the Convent.
+
+She had seen all that before somewhere, John coming over the Canal bridge
+with the women in black.... She remembered. That was in one of her three
+dreams. Only what she saw now was incomplete. There had been something
+more in the dream. Something had happened.
+
+It happened half an hour later when she went out to find John in the
+Convent garden where he was walking with the nuns. The garden shimmered
+in a silver mist from the canal, the broad grass plots, the clipped
+hedges, the cones and spikes of yew, the tall, feathery chrysanthemums,
+the trailing bowers and arches, were netted and laced and webbed with the
+silver mist. Down at the bottom of the path the forms of John and the
+three women showed blurred and insubstantial and still.
+
+Presently they emerged, solid and clear; the nuns in their black habits
+and the raking white caps like wings that set them sailing along. They
+were showing John their garden, taking a shy, gentle, absorbed
+possession of him.
+
+And as she came towards him John passed her without speaking. But his
+face had turned to her with the look she had seen before. Eyes of hatred,
+eyes that repudiated and betrayed her.
+
+The nuns had stopped, courteously, to greet her; she fell behind with one
+of them; the two others had overtaken John who had walked on, keeping up
+his stiff, repudiating air.
+
+The air, the turn of the head, the look that she had dreamed. Only in the
+dream it had hurt her, and now she was hard and had no pain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in the Convent garden that they played it out, in one final,
+astounding conversation.
+
+The nuns had brought two chairs out on to the flagged terrace and set a
+small table there covered with a white cloth. Thus invited, John had no
+choice but to take his place beside her. Still he retained his mood.
+
+(The nuns had left them. Sutton was in one of the wards, helping with an
+operation.)
+
+"I thought," he said, "that I was going to have peace...."
+
+It seemed to her that they had peace. They had been so much at the mercy
+of chance moments that this secure hour given to them in the closed
+garden seemed, in its quietness, immense.
+
+"... But first it's Sutton, then it's you."
+
+"We needn't say anything unless you like. There isn't much to be said."
+
+"Oh, isn't there!"
+
+"Not," she said, "if you're coming back."
+
+"Of course I'm coming back.... Look here, Charlotte. You didn't suppose I
+was really going to bolt, did you?"
+
+"Were you going to change into your pyjamas at Ostend?"
+
+"My pyjamas? I brought them for Gurney."
+
+"And your sleeping draught was for Gurney?"
+
+"Of course it was."
+
+"And your razors and your toothbrush, too. Oh, John, what's the good of
+lying? You forgot that I helped Alice Bartrum to pack Gurney's things.
+You forget that Billy knows."
+
+"Do I? I shan't forget your going back on me; your betraying me," he
+said.
+
+And for the first time she realised how alone he was; how horribly alone.
+He had nobody but her.
+
+"Who have I betrayed you to?"
+
+"To Sutton. To McClane. To everybody you talked to."
+
+"No. No."
+
+"Yes. And you betrayed me in your thoughts. That's worse. People don't
+always mean what they say. It's what they think."
+
+"What was I to think?"
+
+"Why, that all the damnable things you said about me weren't true."
+
+"I didn't say anything."
+
+"You've betrayed me by the things you didn't say."
+
+"Why should I have betrayed you?"
+
+"You know why. When a woman betrays a man it's always for one reason."
+
+He threw his head back to strike at her with his eyes, hard and keen,
+dark blue like the blade of a new knife ... "Because he hasn't given her
+what she wants."
+
+"Oh, what I want--I thought we'd settled that long ago."
+
+"You've never settled it. It isn't in you to settle it."
+
+"I can't talk to you about that. You're too horrible. But I didn't
+betray you."
+
+"You listened to people who betrayed me. If you cared for me in any
+decent way you'd have stood by me."
+
+"I _have_ stood by you through thick and thin. I've lied your lies. There
+isn't one of your lies I haven't backed. I've done everything I could
+think of to keep people from knowing about you."
+
+"Yet you go and tell Sutton that I've bolted. That I'm a deserter."
+
+"Yes, when it was all over. If you'd got away everybody'd have known. As
+it is, only Billy and I know; and he's safe."
+
+"You insist that I was trying to get away? I own I thought of it. But one
+doesn't do everything one thinks of.... No.... Don't imagine I was sick
+of the war, or sick of Belgium. It's you I'm sick of."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you. You had your warning. I told you what would happen if you let
+me see you wanted me."
+
+"You think you've seen that?"
+
+"I've seen nothing else."
+
+"Once, perhaps. Twice. Once when you came to me on Barrow Hill. And when
+we were crossing; once. And each time you never saw it."
+
+"Anybody can see. It's in your face. In your eyes and mouth. You can't
+hide your lust."
+
+"My--'lust.' Don't you know I only cared for you because I'd done
+with that?"
+
+They stopped. The nuns were back again, bringing great cups of hot black
+coffee, coming quietly, and going quietly away. It was wonderful, all
+that beauty and gentleness and peace existing in the horror of the war,
+and through this horror within horror that John had made.
+
+They drank their coffee, slowly, greedily, prolonging this distraction
+from their torment. Charlotte finished first.
+
+"You say I want you. I own I did once. But I don't now. Why, I care
+more for the scrubbiest little Belgian with a smashed finger than I
+do for you."
+
+"I suppose you can satisfy your erotic susceptibilities that way."
+
+"I haven't any, I tell you. I only cared for you because I thought you
+were clean. I thought your mind was beautiful. And you aren't clean. And
+your mind's the ugliest thing I know. And the cruelest.... Let's get it
+right, John. I can forgive your funking. If your nerves are jumpy they're
+jumpy. I daresay _I_ shall be jumpy if the Germans come into Ghent before
+I'm out of it. I can forgive everything you've done to _me_. I can
+forgive your lying. I see there's nothing left for you but to lie.... But
+I can't forgive your not caring for the wounded. That's cruel.... You
+didn't care for that boy at Melle--"
+
+John's mouth opened as if he were going to say something. He
+seemed to gasp.
+
+"--No, you didn't or you wouldn't have left him. Whatever your funk was
+like, you couldn't have left him if you'd cared, any more than I could
+have left _you_."
+
+"He was dead when I left him."
+
+"He was still warm when I found him. Billy thought you were bringing him
+away. He says he wasn't dead."
+
+"He lies, then. But you'll take his word against mine."
+
+"Yes," she said simply. "And he says he _didn't_ tell you I was going
+on with him. You don't care for _me_. If you'd cared you couldn't
+have left me."
+
+"I thought you said if it was a toss up between you and a wounded man--?
+There were wounded men in that car."
+
+"There was a wounded man with me. You left _him_.... Don't imagine I
+cared about myself, whether I lived or died. It was because I cared about
+you. I cared so awfully."
+
+He jerked out a laugh. One light, short sound of dismissal and contempt.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+That light sound he made had ended it.
+
+She remembered it afterwards, not as a thing that hurt her, but as an
+unpleasant incident of the day, like the rudeness of a stranger, and yet
+not to be forgotten. It had the importance of extreme finality; his
+answer to everything, unanswerable.
+
+She didn't care. She had ended it herself and with so clean a cut that
+she could afford to let him have that inarticulate last word. She had
+left him nothing to do but keep up his pretence that there had never been
+so much as a beginning. He gave no sign of anything having been between
+them, unless his attitude to Sutton was a sign.
+
+It showed the next day, the terrible Sunday that was ending everything.
+Yesterday he had given orders that Charlotte should drive Sutton while he
+drove by himself. To-day he had changed all that. Gwinnie was to drive
+Sutton and Charlotte was to go out alone. And he had offered himself to
+McClane. To McClane. That gave her the measure of his resentment. She
+could see that he coupled her with Sutton while he yet tried to keep them
+apart. He was not going to have more to do with either of them than he
+could help.
+
+So that she had hardly seen or heard of him that day. And when the solid
+work began she found that she could turn him out of her mind as if he had
+never been there. The intolerable burden of him slipped from her; all
+morning she had a sense of cold clearness and lightness; and she judged
+that her deliverance was complete.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had waited a long time with her car drawn up close under the house
+wall in the long street at Melle. McClane's car stood in front of her,
+waiting for John. He was up there on the battlefield, with Sutton and
+McClane. McClane had kept him off it all day; he had come to her when
+they started and told her not to worry. Conway would be all right. He
+would see that he didn't get into places where he--well, unsuitable
+places. He would keep him driving. But in the end one of the stretcher
+bearers had given in, and John had to take his turn.
+
+He had been keen to go. Keen. She could see him swinging along up the
+road to the battlefield and McClane with him, running to keep up with his
+tall stride.
+
+She had taken her turn too and she knew what it was like up there.
+Endless turnip fields; turnips thrown up as if they had been pulled,
+livid roots that rotted, and the wounded and the dead men lying out among
+them. You went stumbling; the turnips rolled and slipped under your feet.
+Seeing things.
+
+Her mind looked the other way, frightened. She was tired out, finished;
+she could have gone to sleep now, sitting up there on the car. It would
+be disgraceful if she went to sleep....
+
+She mustn't think about the battlefield. She couldn't think; she could
+only look on at things coming up in her mind. Hoeing turnips at Barrow
+Hill Farm. Supposing you found dead men lying out on the fields at
+Stow? You would mind that more; it would be more horrible.... She saw
+herself coming over the fields carrying a lamb that she had taken from
+its dead mother. Then she saw John coming up the field to their seat in
+the beech ring. _That_ hurt her; she couldn't bear it; she mustn't
+think about that.
+
+John was all right; he wasn't shirking. They had been away so long now
+that she knew they must have gone far down the battlefield, deep into it;
+the edges and all the nearer places had been gleaned. It would be dark
+before they came back.
+
+It was getting dark now, and she was afraid that when the light went she
+would go to sleep. If only she wasn't so tired.
+
+She was so drowsy that at first she didn't hear McClane speaking, she
+hadn't seen him come to the step of the car.
+
+McClane's voice sounded soft and unnatural and a little mysterious.
+
+"I'm afraid something's--happened."
+
+"Who to?"
+
+"We-ell--"
+
+The muffled drawl irritated her. Why couldn't he speak out?
+
+"Is John hurt?"
+
+"I'm afraid so."
+
+"Is he killed?"
+
+"Well--I don't know that he can live. A German's put a bullet into him."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+She jumped down off the car.
+
+McClane laid his hand on her arm. "Don't. We shall bring him in--"
+
+"He's dead then?"
+
+"I think so--You'd better not go to him."
+
+"Of course I'm going to him. Where _is_ he?"
+
+He steered her very quickly and carefully across the street, then led her
+with his arm in hers, pressing her back to the dark shelter of the
+houses. They heard the barking of machine guns from the battlefield at
+the top and the rattle of the bullets on the causeway. These sounds
+seemed to her to have no significance. As if they had existed only in
+some unique relation to John Conway, his death robbed them of vitality.
+
+The door of the house opened a little way; they slipped into the long
+narrow room lighted by a few oil lamps at one end. At the other John's
+body lay on a stretcher set up on a trestle table, his feet turned
+outwards to the door, ready. The corners at this end were so dark that
+the body seemed to stretch across the whole width of the room. A soldier
+came forward with a lighted candle and gave it to McClane. And she saw
+John's face; the bridge of his nose, with its winged nostrils lifted. His
+head was tilted upwards at the chin; that gave it a noble look. His mouth
+was open, ever so slightly open ... McClane shifted the light so that it
+fell on his forehead.... Black eyebrows curling up like little
+moustaches.... The half-dropped eyelids guarded the dead eyes.
+
+She thought of how he used to dream. All his dream was in his dead face;
+his dead face was cold and beautiful like his dream.
+
+As she looked at him her breast closed down on her heart as though it
+would never lift again; her breath shuddered there under her tightened
+throat. She could feel McClane's hand pressing heavily on her shoulder.
+She had no strength to shake it off; she was even glad of it. She felt
+small and weak and afraid; afraid, not of the beautiful thing that lay
+there, but of something terrible and secret that it hid, something that
+any minute she would have to know about.
+
+"Where was he hit?"
+
+"In the back."
+
+She trembled and McClane's hand pressed closer. "The bullet passed clean
+through his heart. He didn't suffer."
+
+"He was getting in Germans?"
+
+"I don't--quite--know--" McClane measured his words out one by one,
+"what--he was doing. Sutton was with him. He knows."
+
+"Where _is_ Billy?"
+
+"Over there. Do you want him?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+A soldier brought a chair for her. She sat down with her back to the
+trestle table. At the lighted end of the room she saw Sutton stooping
+over a young Belgian captain, buttoning his tunic under the sling he had
+adjusted. The captain's face showed pure and handsome, like a girl's,
+like a young nun's, bound round and chin-wrapped in the white bandages.
+He sat on the floor in front of Sutton's table with his legs stretched
+out flat. His back was propped against the thigh of a Belgian soldier
+seated on an upturned barrel. Her hurt eyes saw them very plain and with
+detail in the light of Sutton's lamp.
+
+That part of the room was full of soldiers. She noticed that they kept
+clear of the trestle table as they went in and out. Only one of them, the
+soldier who supported the young captain, kept on looking, raising his
+head and looking there as if he couldn't turn his eyes away. He faced
+her. His rifle stood steadied by his knees, the bayonet pointing up
+between his eyes.
+
+She found herself thinking. It was Sutton's back that made her think.
+John must have been stooping over the German like that. John's wound
+was in his back. But if he was stooping it couldn't have come that
+way. The bullet would have gone through his chest.... Perhaps he had
+turned to pick up his stretcher. Billy was there. He would tell her
+how it had happened.
+
+She thought: No. I've had enough. I shall give it up. I won't ask him.
+But she knew that she would ask him. Once started, having gone so far,
+flash by flash and step by step, she couldn't give it up; she would go
+on, even now, till her knowledge was complete. Then she was aware again
+of the soldier's eyes.
+
+They were very large and bright and black in his smooth boy's face; he
+had a small innocent boy's mouth that seemed to move, restless and
+fascinated, like his eyes. Presently she saw that he was looking at her,
+that his eyes returned to her again and again, as if he were aware of
+some connection between her and the thing that fascinated him, as if _he_
+were somehow connected.
+
+He was listening to her now as Sutton spoke to her.
+
+"We must get him away quick."
+
+"Yes. Do let's get him away."
+
+Sutton shook his head. He was thinking of the wounded captain.
+
+"We can't yet. I'll come back for him."
+
+"Then I'll wait with him here."
+
+"Oh no--I think--"
+
+"I can't leave him."
+
+"It isn't safe. The place may be taken."
+
+"I won't leave him." Sutton hesitated. "I won't, Billy."
+
+"McClane, she says she won't leave him."
+
+"Then," McClane said, "we must take him now. We'll have to make
+room somehow."
+
+(To make room for him--somehow.)
+
+Sutton and the soldier carried the captain out and came back for John's
+body. The Belgian sprang forward with eager, subservient alacrity to put
+himself at the head of the stretcher, but Sutton thrust him aside.
+
+The Belgian shrugged his shoulders and picked up his rifle with an air of
+exaggerated unconcern. Sutton and McClane carried out the stretcher.
+
+Charlotte was following them when the soldier stopped her.
+
+"Mademoiselle--"
+
+He had propped his rifle against the trestles and stood there, groping in
+his pocket. A dirty handkerchief, dragged up by his fumbling, hung out by
+its corner. All along the sharp crease there was a slender smear of
+blood. He looked down at it and pushed it back out of her sight.
+
+He had taken something out of his pocket.
+
+"I will give you this. I found it on the battlefield."
+
+He handed her a small leather pocketbook that was John's. It had her
+photograph in it and his, taken together.
+
+      *       * * * *
+
+They were putting him out of sight, under the hood of the ambulance, and
+she waited there when the war correspondent came up.
+
+"_Can_ you tell me the name of the volunteer who's been killed?"
+
+"Conway. John Roden Conway."
+
+"What? _That_ man? The man who raced the Germans into Zele?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "that man."
+
+      *       * * * *
+
+She was in John's room, packing, gathering together the things she would
+have to take to his father. Sutton came to her there.
+
+They had orders to be ready for the retreat any time that night.
+
+Billy had brought her John's wrist watch and cigarette case.
+
+"Billy," she said, "that soldier gave me this."
+
+She showed him the pocketbook.
+
+"What soldier?"
+
+"The one who was with the captain."
+
+"_He_ gave it you?"
+
+"Yes. He said he found it on the battlefield. It must have dropped out of
+John's pocket."
+
+"It couldn't have dropped.... I wonder why he kept that."
+
+"But he didn't keep it. He gave it to me."
+
+"He was going to keep it, or he'd have handed it over to me with the
+other things."
+
+"Does it matter?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+She thought: "Why can't he leave it alone? They _had_ all his things, his
+poor things."
+
+But Sutton was still thoughtful. "I wonder why he gave it you."
+
+"I think he was sorry."
+
+"_Was_ he!"
+
+"Sorry for me, I mean."
+
+Sutton said nothing. He was absorbed in contemplating the photograph.
+They had been taken standing by the hurdle of the sheepfold, she with the
+young lamb in her arms and John looking down at her.
+
+"That was taken at Barrow Hill Farm," she said, "where we were together.
+He looked just like that.... Oh, Billy, do you think the past's really
+past?... Isn't there some way he could go on being what he _was_?"
+
+"I don't know, Sharlie, I don't know."
+
+"Why couldn't he have stayed there! Then he'd always have been like that.
+We should never have known."
+
+"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 to _know_."
+
+"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 he _leave_ the 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--"
+
+"_Calling_ to 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. He _said_ his 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.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+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?"
+
+"_I_ know. 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 makes _me_ different. 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's _done_, 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 your _face_...."
+
+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 I _have_ done, 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 least _I_ can'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't _want_ to 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 to _me_. 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?"
+
+"All _this_.... I'd give anything to care for you, Billy dear, but I
+don't care. I _can'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."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+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 transport _Victoria_. 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. It _happened_. The day we were in
+Bruges. 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."
+
+"_I_ do."
+
+"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 about _them_. 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'm_ fit. What's the matter with me?"
+
+"Not much. Your body's all right. And your mind _was_ all right till
+Conway 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 the _truth_ about 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 know _why_.... Conway was an out and out degenerate.
+He couldn't help _that_. 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 could _feel_ passion, 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. _That_ upset 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 of
+the 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 to _me_. 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."
+
+"_Had_ he?" 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. He _had_ to 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 even _his_ way. 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 that _was_ what 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.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romantic, by May Sinclair
+
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