"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