Yet the things Morrie saw in South Africa--do you remember how he
_would_ tell us about them?--weren't in it with the things that happened
here. Pounding apart, the things that corpses can do, apparently on
their own, are simply unbelievable--what the war correspondents call
"fantastic postures." But I haven't got to the point when I can slap my
thighs, and roar with laughter--if they happen to be Germans.

In between, the boredom is so awful that I've heard some of our men say
they'd rather have things happening. And, of course, we're all hoping
that when those shells come along there won't be quite so much
"between."

Love to Ronny and Mother and all of them.--Your very affectionate,

     NICHOLAS.


          June 1st, 1915.
     B.E.F., FRANCE.

My Darling Ronny,--Yes, I think all your letters must have come, because
you've answered everything. You always tell me just what I want to know.
When I see the fat envelopes coming I know they're going to be
chock-full of the things I've happened to be thinking about. Don't let's
ever forget to put the dates, because I make out that I've always
dreamed about you, too, the nights you've written.

And so the Aunties are working in the War Hospital Supply DepГґt? It's
frightfully funny what Dorothy says about their enjoying the War and
feeling so important. Don't let her grudge it them, though; it's all the
enjoyment, or importance, they're ever had in their lives, poor dears.
But I shall know, if a swab bursts in my inside, that it's Auntie
Edie's. As for Auntie Emmeline's, I can't even imagine what they'd be
like--monstrosities--or little babies injured at birth. Aunt Louie's
would be well-shaped and firm, but erring a little on the hard side,
don't you think?

That reminds me, I suppose I may tell you now since it's been in the
papers, that we've actually got Moving Fortresses out here. I haven't
seen them yet, but a fellow who has thinks they must be uncommonly like
Drayton's and my thing. I suspect, from what he says, they're a bit
better, though. We hadn't got the rocking-horse idea.

It's odd--this time last year I should have gone off my head with agony
at the mere thought of anybody getting in before us; and now I don't
care a bit. I do mind rather for Drayton's sake, though I don't suppose
he cares, either. The great thing is that it's been done, and done
better. Anyway we've been lucky. Supposing the Germans had got on to
them, and trotted them out first, and one of our own guns had potted him
or me, _that_ would have been a jolly sell.

What makes you ask after Timmy? I hardly like to tell you the awful
thing that's happened to him. He had to travel down to the base hospital
on a poor chap who was shivering with shell-shock, and--_he never came
back again_. It doesn't matter, because the weather's so warm now that I
don't want him. But I'm sorry because you all gave him to me and it
looks as if I hadn't cared for him. But I did....

     June 10th.

Sorry I couldn't finish this last week. Things developed rather
suddenly. I wish I could tell you _what_, but we mustn't let on what
happens, not even now, when it's done happening. Still, there are all
the other things I couldn't say anything about at the time.

If you _must_ know, I've been up "over the top" three times now since I
came out in February. So, you see, one gets through all right.

Well--I tried ages ago to tell Dorothy what it was like. It's been like
that every time (except that I've got over the queer funky feeling
half-way through). It'll be like that again next time, I know. Because
now I've tested it. And, Ronny--I couldn't tell Dorothy this, because
she'd think it was all rot--but when you're up first out of the trench
and stand alone on the parapet, it's absolute happiness. And the charge
is--well, it's simply heaven. It's as if you'd never really lived till
then; I certainly hadn't, not up to the top-notch, barring those three
days we had together.

That's why--this part's mostly for Michael--there's something rotten
about that poem he sent me that somebody wrote, making out that this
gorgeous fight-feeling (which is what I suppose he's trying for) is
nothing but a form of sex-madness. If he thinks that's all there is in
it, he doesn't know much about war, or love either. Though I'm bound to
say there's a clever chap in my battalion who thinks the same thing. He
says he feels the ecstasy, or whatever it is, all right, just the same
as I do; but that it's simply submerged savagery bobbing up to the
top--a hidden lust for killing, and the hidden memory of having killed,
he called it. He's always ashamed of it the next day, as if he had
been drunk.

And my Sergeant-Major, bless him, says there's nothing in it but "a
ration of rum." Can't be that in my case because I always give mine to a
funny chap who _knows_ he's going to have collywobbles as soon as he
gets out into the open.

But that isn't a bit what I mean. They're all wrong about it, because
they make it turn on killing, and not on your chance of being killed.
_That_--when you realize it--well, it's like the thing you told me about
that you said you thought must be God because it's so real. I didn't
understand it then, but I do now. You're bang up against reality--you're
going clean into it--and the sense of it's exquisite. Of course, while
one half of you is feeling like that, the other half is fighting to kill
and doing its best to keep on _this_ side reality. But I've been near
enough to the other side to know. And I wish Michael's friend would come
out and see what it's like for himself. Or, better still, Mick. _He_'d
write a poem about it that would make you sit up. It's a sin that I
should be getting all this splendid stuff when I can't do anything
with it.

Love to all of them and to your darling self.--Always your loving,

     NICKY.

P.S.-I wish you'd try to get some notion of it into Dad and Dorothy and
Mother. It would save them half the misery they're probably
going through.

       *       *       *       *       *

The gardener had gone to the War, and Veronica was in the garden,
weeding the delphinium border.

It was Sunday afternoon and she was alone there. Anthony was digging in
the kitchen garden, and Frances was with him, gathering green peas and
fruit for the hospital. Every now and then she came through the open
door on to the flagged path of the upper terrace with the piled up
baskets in her arms, and she smiled and nodded to Veronica.

It was quiet in the garden, so that, when her moment came, Veronica
could time it by the striking of the clock heard through the open
doorway of the house: four strokes; and the half-hour; and then, almost
on the stroke, her rush of pure, mysterious happiness.

Up till then she had been only tranquil; and her tranquillity made each
small act exquisite and delightful, as her fingers tugged at the weeds,
and shook the earth from their weak roots, and the palms of her hand
smoothed over the places where they had been. She thought of old Jean
and Suzanne, planting flowers in the garden at Renton, and of that
tranquillity of theirs that was the saddest thing she had ever seen.

And her happiness had come, almost on the stroke of the half-hour, not
out of herself or out of her thoughts, but mysteriously and from
somewhere a long way off.

       *       *       *       *       *

She turned to nod and smile at Frances who was coming through the door
with her basket, and it was then that she saw Nicholas.

He stood on something that looked like a low wall, raised between her
and the ash-tree; he stood motionless, as if arrested in the act of
looking back to see if she were following him. His eyes shone, vivid and
blue, as they always shone when he was happy. He smiled at her, but
with no movement of his mouth. He shouted to her, but with no sound.

Everything was still; her body and her soul were still; her heart was
still; it beat steadily.

She had started forwards to go to him when the tree thrust itself
between them, and he was gone.

And Frances was still coming through the door as Veronica had seen her
when she turned. She was calling to her to come in out of the sun.



XXIV

The young men had gone--Morton Ellis, who had said he was damned if he'd
fight for his country; and Austin Mitchell who had said he hadn't got a
country; and Monier-Owen, who had said that England was not a country
you could fight for. George Wadham had gone long ago. That, Michael
said, was to be expected. Even a weak gust could sweep young Wadham off
his feet--and he had been fairly carried away. He could no more resist
the vortex of the War than he could resist the vortex of the arts.

Michael had two pitiful memories of the boy: one of young Wadham
swaggering into Stephen's room in uniform (the first time he had it on),
flushed and pleased with himself and talking excitedly about the "Great
Game"; and one of young Wadham returned from the Front, mature and hard,
not talking about the "Great Game" at all, and wincing palpably when
other people talked; a young Wadham who, they said, ought to be arrested
under the Defence of the Realm Act as a quencher of war-enthusiasms.

The others had gone later, one by one, each with his own gesture:
Mitchell and Monier-Owen when Stephen went; Ellis the day after
Stephen's death. It had taken Stephen's death to draw him.

Only Michael remained.

He told them they were mistaken if they thought their going would
inspire him to follow them. It, and Stephen's death, merely intensified
the bitterness he felt towards the War. He was more than ever determined
to keep himself pure from it, consecrated to his Forlorn Hope. If they
fell back, all the more reason why be should go on.

And, while he waited for the moment of vision, he continued Stephen's
work on the _Green Review_. Stephen had left it to him when he went out.
Michael tried to be faithful to the tradition he thus inherited; but
gradually Stephen's spirit disappeared from the _Review_ and its place
was taken by the clear, hard, unbreakable thing that was Michael's mind.

And Michael knew that he was beginning to make himself felt.

But Stephen's staff, such as it was, and nearly all his contributors had
gone to the War, one after another, and Michael found himself taking all
their places. He began to feel a strain, which he took to be the strain
of overwork, and he went down to Renton to recover.

That was on the Tuesday that followed Veronica's Sunday.

He thought that down there he would get away from everything that did
him harm: from his father's and mother's eyes; from his sister's proud,
cold face; and from his young brother's smile; and from Veronica's
beauty that saddened him; and from the sense of Nicky's danger that
brooded as a secret obsession over the house. He would fill up the awful
empty space. He thought: "For a whole fortnight I shall get away from
this infernal War."

But he did not get away from it. On every stage of the journey down he
encountered soldiers going to the Front. He walked in the Park at
Darlington between his trains, and wounded soldiers waited for him on
every seat, shuffled towards him round every turning, hobbled after him
on their crutches down every path. Their eyes looked at him with a
shrewd hostility. He saw the young Yorkshire recruits drinking in the
open spaces. Sergeants' eyes caught and measured him, appraising his
physique. Behind and among them he saw Drayton's, and RГ©veillaud's, and
Stephen's eyes; and young Wadham's eyes, strange and secretive and hard.

       *       *       *       *       *

At Reyburn Michael's train was switched off to a side platform in the
open. Before he left Darlington, a thin, light rain had begun to fall
from a shred of blown cloud; and at Reyburn the burst mass was coming
down. The place was full of the noise of rain. The drops tapped on the
open platform and hissed as the wind drove them in a running stream.
They drummed loudly on the station roof. But these sounds went out
suddenly, covered by the trampling of feet.

A band of Highlanders with their bagpipes marched into the station. They
lined up solemnly along the open platform with their backs to Michael's
train and their faces to the naked rails on the other side. Higher up
Michael could see the breast of an engine; it was backing, backing,
towards the troop-train that waited under the cover of the roof. He
could hear the clank of the coupling and the recoil. At that sound the
band had their mouths to their bagpipes and their fingers ready on the
stops. Two or three officers hurried down from the station doors and
stood ready.

The train came on slowly, packed with men; men who thrust their heads
and shoulders through the carriage windows, and knelt on the seats, and
stood straining over each other's backs to look out; men whose faces
were scarlet with excitement; men with open mouths shouting for joy.

The officers saluted as it passed. It halted at the open platform, and
suddenly the pipers began to play.

Michael got out of his train and watched.

Solemnly, in the grey evening of the rain, with their faces set in a
sort of stern esctasy, the Highlanders played to their comrades. Michael
did not know whether their tune was sad or gay. It poured itself into
one mournful, savage, sacred cry of salutation and valediction. When it
stopped the men shouted; there were voices that barked hoarsely and
broke; voices that roared; young voices that screamed, strung up by the
skirling of the bagpipes. The pipers played to them again.

And suddenly Michael was overcome. Pity shook him and grief and an
intolerable yearning, and shame. For one instant his soul rose up above
the music, and was made splendid and holy, the next he cowered under it,
stripped and beaten. He clenched his fists, hating this emotion that
stung him to tears and tore at his heart and at the hardness of
his mind.

As the troop-train moved slowly out of the station the pipers, piping
more and more shrilly, swung round and marched beside it to the end of
the platform. The band ceased abruptly, and the men answered with shout
after shout of violent joy; they reared up through the windows,
straining for the last look--and were gone.

Michael turned to the porter who lifted his luggage from the rack. "What
regiment are they?" he said.

"Camerons, sir. Going to the Front."

The clear, uncanny eyes of Veronica's father pursued him now.

       *       *       *       *       *

At last he had got away from it.

In Rathdale, at any rate, there was peace. The hills and their pastures,
and the flat river fields were at peace. And in the villages of Morfe
and Renton there was peace; for as yet only a few men had gone from
them. The rest were tied to the land, and they were more absorbed in the
hay-harvest than in the War. Even the old Belgians in Veronica's cottage
were at peace. They had forgotten.

For three days Michael himself had peace.

He went up to Veronica's hill and sat on it; and thought how for
hundreds of miles, north, south, east and west of him, there was not a
soul whom he knew. In all his life he had never been more by himself.

This solitude of his had a singular effect on Michael's mind. So far
from having got away from the War he had never been more conscious of it
than he was now. What he had got away from was other people's
consciousness. From the beginning the thing that threatened him had
been, not the War but this collective war-spirit, clamouring for his
private soul.

For the first time since August, nineteen-fourteen, he found himself
thinking, in perfect freedom and with perfect lucidity, about the War.
He had really known, half the time, that it was the greatest War of
Independence that had ever been. As for his old hatred of the British
Empire, he had seen long ago that there was no such thing, in the
continental sense of Empire; there was a unique thing, the rule, more
good than bad, of an imperial people. He had seen that the strength of
the Allies was in exact proportion to the strength and the enlightenment
of their democracies. Reckoning by decades, there could be no deadlock
in the struggle; the deadlock meant a ten years' armistice and another
war. He could not help seeing these things. His objection to occupying
his mind with them had been that they were too easy.

Now that he could look at it by himself he saw how the War might take
hold of you like a religion. It was the Great War of Redemption. And
redemption meant simply thousands and millions of men in troop-ships and
troop-trains coming from the ends of the world to buy the freedom of the
world with their bodies. It meant that the very fields he was looking
over, and this beauty of the hills, those unused ramparts where no
batteries were hid, and the small, silent villages, Morfe and Renton,
were bought now with their bodies.

He wondered how at this moment any sane man could be a Pacifist. And,
wondering, he felt a reminiscent sting of grief and yearning. But he
refused, resolutely, to feel any shame.

His religion also was good; and, anyhow, you didn't choose your
religion; it chose you.

And on Saturday the letters came: John's letter enclosing the wire from
the War Office, and the letter that Nicky's Colonel had written
to Anthony.

Nicky was killed.

Michael took in the fact, and the date (it was last Sunday). There were
some official regrets, but they made no impression on him. John's letter
made no impression on him. Last Sunday Nicky was killed.

He had not even unfolded the Colonel's letter yet. The close black lines
showed through the thin paper. Their closeness repelled him. He did not
want to know how his brother had died; at least not yet. He was afraid
of the Colonel's letter. He felt that by simply not reading it he could
put off the unbearable turn of the screw.

He was shivering with cold. He drew up his chair to the wide, open
hearth-place where there was no fire; he held out his hands over it. The
wind swept down the chimney and made him colder; and he felt sick.

He had been sitting there about an hour when Suzanne came in and asked
him if he would like a little fire. He heard himself saying, "No, thank
you," in a hard voice. The idea of warmth and comfort was disagreeable
to him. Suzanne asked him then if he had had bad news? And he heard
himself saying: "Yes," and Suzanne trying, trying very gently, to
persuade him that it was perhaps only that Monsieur Nicky was wounded?

"No? _Then_," said the old woman, "he is killed." And she began to cry.

Michael couldn't stand that. He got up and opened the door into the
outer room, and she passed through before him, sobbing and whimpering.
Her voice came to him through the closed door in a sharp cry telling
Jean that Monsieur Nicky was dead, and Jean's voice came, hushing her.

Then he heard the feet of the old man shuffling across the kitchen
floor, and the outer door opening and shutting softly; and through the
windows at the back of the room, he saw, without heeding, as the
Belgians passed and went up into the fields together, weeping, leaving
him alone.

They had remembered.

It was then that Michael read the Colonel's letter, and learned the
manner of his brother's death: "... About a quarter past four o'clock in
the afternoon his battalion was being pressed back, when he rallied his
men and led them in as gallant an attack as was ever made by so small a
number in this War. He was standing on the enemy's parapet when he was
shot through the heart and fell. By a quarter to five the trench was
stormed and taken, owing to his personal daring and impetus and to the
affection and confidence he inspired.... We hear it continually said of
our officers and men that 'they're all the same,' and I daresay as far
as pluck goes they are. But, if I may say so, we all felt that your son
had something that we haven't got...."

       *       *       *       *       *

Michael lay awake in the bed that had been his brother's marriage bed.
The low white ceiling sagged and bulged above him. For three nights the
room had been as if Nicky and Veronica had never gone from it. They had
compelled him to think of them. They had lain where he lay, falling
asleep in each other's arms.

The odd thing had been that his acute and vivid sense of them had in no
way troubled him. It had been simply there like some exquisite
atmosphere, intensifying his peace. He had had the same feeling he
always had when Veronica was with him. He had liked to lie with his head
on their pillow, to touch what they had touched, to look at the same
things in the same room, to go in and out through the same doors over
the same floors, remembering their hands and feet and eyes, and saying
to himself: "They did this and this"; or, "That must have pleased them."

It ought to have been torture to him; and he could not imagine why it
was not.

And now, on this fourth night, he had no longer that sense of Nicky and
Veronica together. The room had emptied itself of its own memory and
significance. He was aware of nothing but the bare, spiritual space
between him and Nicky. He lay contemplating it steadily and without
any horror.

He thought: "This ends it. Of course I shall go out now. I might have
known that this would end it. _He_ knew."

He remembered how Nicky had come to him in his room that night in
August. He could see himself sitting on the side of his bed,
half-dressed, and Nicky standing over him, talking.

Nicky had taken it for granted even then that he would go out some time.
He remembered how he had said, "Not yet."

He thought: "Of course; this must have been what he meant."

And presently he fell asleep, exhausted and at the same time appeased.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was morning.

Michael's sleep dragged him down; it drowned and choked him as he
struggled to wake.

Something had happened. He would know what it was when he came clear out
of this drowning.

Now he remembered. Nicky was killed. Last Sunday. He knew that. But that
wasn't all of it. There was something else that followed on--

Suddenly his mind leaped on it. He was going out. He would be killed
too. And because he was going out, and because he would be killed, he
was not feeling Nicky's death so acutely as he should have thought he
would have felt it. He had been let off that.

He lay still a moment, looking at the thing he was going to do, feeling
a certain pleasure in its fitness. Drayton and RГ©veillaud and Lawrence
had gone out, and they had been killed. Ellis and Mitchell and
Monier-Owen were going out and they would certainly be killed. Wadham
had gone out and young Vereker, and they also would be killed.

Last Sunday it was Nicky. Now it must be he.

His mind acknowledged the rightness of the sequence without concern. It
was aware that his going depended on his own will. But never in all his
life had he brought so little imagination to the act of willing.

He got up, bathed in the river, dressed, and ate his breakfast. He
accepted each moment as it arrived, without imagination or concern.

Then his mother's letter came. Frances wrote, among other things: "I
know how terribly you will be feeling it, because I know how you cared
for him. I wish I could comfort you. We could not bear it, Michael, if
we were not so proud of him."

He answered this letter at once. He wrote: "I couldn't bear it either,
if I were not going out. But of course I'm going now."

As he signed himself, "Your loving Michael," he thought: "That settles
it." Yet, if he had considered what he meant by settling it he would
have told himself that he meant nothing; that last night had settled it;
that his resolution had been absolutely self-determined and absolutely
irrevocable then, and that his signature gave it no more sanctity or
finality than it had already. If he was conscript, he was conscript to
his own will.

He went out at once with his letter, though he knew that the post did
not leave Renton for another five hours.

It was the sliding of this light thing and its fall into the letter-box
that shook him into realization of what he had done and of what was
before him. He knew now why he was in such a hurry to write that letter
and to post it. By those two slight acts, not dreadful nor difficult in
themselves, he had put it out of his power to withdraw from the one
supremely difficult and dreadful act. A second ago, while the letter was
still in his hands, he could have backed out, because he had not given
any pledge. Now he would have to go through with it. And he saw clearly
for the first time what it was that he would have to go through.

He left the village and went up to Renton Moor and walked along the top
for miles, without knowing or caring where he went, and seeing nothing
before him but his own act and what must come afterwards. By to-morrow,
or the next day at the latest, he would have enlisted; by six months, at
the latest, three months if he had what they called "luck," he would be
in the trenches, fighting and killing, not because he chose, but because
he would be told to fight and kill. By the simple act of sending that
letter to his mother he was committed to the whole ghastly business.

And he funked it. There was no use lying to himself and saying that he
didn't funk it.

Even more than the actual fighting and killing, he funked looking on at
fighting and killing; as for being killed, he didn't think he would
really mind that so much. It would come--it must come--as a relief from
the horrors he would have to see before it came. Nicky had said that
they were unbelievable; he had seemed to think you couldn't imagine them
if you hadn't seen them. But Michael could. He had only to think of them
to see them now. He could make war-pictures for himself, in five
minutes, every bit as terrifying as the things they said happened under
fire. Any fool, if he chose to think about it, could see what must
happen. Only people didn't think. They rushed into it without seeing
anything; and then, if they were honest, they owned that they funked it,
before and during and afterwards and all the time.

Nicky didn't. But that was only because Nicky had something that the
others hadn't got; that he, Michael, hadn't. It was all very well to
say, as he had said last night: "This ends it"; or, as their phrase was,
"Everything goes in now." It was indeed, as far as he was concerned,
the end of beauty and of the making of beauty, and of everything worth
caring for; but it was also the beginning of a life that Michael dreaded
more than fighting and killing and being killed: a life of boredom, of
obscene ugliness, of revolting contacts, of intolerable subjection. For
of course he was going into the ranks as Nicky had gone. And already he
could feel the heat and pressure and vibration of male bodies packed
beside and around him on the floor; he could hear their breathing; he
could smell their fetid bedding, their dried sweat.

Of course he was going through with it; only--this was the thought his
mind turned round and round on in horror at itself--he funked it. He
funked it so badly that he would really rather die than go through with
it. When he was actually killed that would be his second death; months
before it could happen he would have known all about it; he would have
been dead and buried and alive again in hell.

What shocked Michael was his discovering, not that he funked it now,
which was natural, almost permissible, but that he had funked it all the
time. He could see now that, since the War began, he had been struggling
to keep out of it. His mind had fought every suggestion that he should
go in. It had run to cover, like a mad, frightened animal before the
thoughts that hunted it down. Funk, pure funk, had been at the bottom of
all he had said and thought and done since August, nineteen-fourteen;
his attitude to the War, his opinion of the Allies, and of the
Government and of its conduct of the War, all his wretched criticisms
and disparagements--what had they been but the very subterfuges
of funk?

His mother had known it; his father had known it; and Dorothy and John.
It was not conceivable that Nicky did not know it.

That was what had made the horror of the empty space that separated
them.

Lawrence Stephen had certainly known it.

He could not understand his not knowing it himself, not seeing that he
struggled. Yet he must have seen that Nicky's death would end it.
Anyhow, it _was_ ended; if not last night, then this morning when he
posted the letter.

But he was no longer appeased by this certainty of his. He was going out
all right. But merely going out was not enough. What counted was the
state of mind in which you went. Lawrence had said, "Victory--Victory is
a state of mind."

Well--it was a state that came naturally to Nicky, and did not come
naturally to him. It was all very well for Nicky: he had wanted to go.
He had gone out victorious before victory. Michael would go beaten
before defeat.

He thought: "If this is volunteering, give me compulsion." All the same
he was going.

All morning and afternoon, as he walked and walked, his thoughts went
the same round. And in the evening they began again, but on a new track.
He thought: "It's all very well to say I'm going; but how _can_ I go?"
He had Lawrence Stephen's work to do; Lawrence's Life and Letters were
in his hands. How could he possibly go and leave Lawrence dead and
forgotten? This view seemed to him to be sanity and common sense.

As his mind darted up this turning it was driven back. He saw Lawrence
Stephen smiling at him as he had smiled at him when RГ©veillaud died.
Lawrence would have wanted him to go more than anything. He would have
chosen to be dead and forgotten rather than keep him.

At night these thoughts left him. He began to think of Nicky and of his
people. His father and mother would never be happy again. Nicky had been
more to them than he was, or even John. He had been more to Dorothy. It
was hard on Dorothy to lose Nicky and Drayton too.

He thought of Nicky and Veronica. Poor little Ronny, what would she do
without Nicky? He thought of Veronica, sitting silent in the train, and
looking at him with her startling look of spiritual maturity. He thought
of Veronica singing to him over and over again:

     "London Bridge is broken down--

       *       *       *       *       *

     "Build it up with gold so fine--

       *       *       *       *       *

     "Build it up with stones so strong--"

He thought of Veronica running about the house and crying, "Where's
Nicky? I want him."

Monday was like Sunday, except that he walked up Karva Hill in the
morning and up Greffington Edge in the afternoon, instead of Renton
Moor. Whichever way he went his thoughts went the same way as yesterday.
The images were, if anything, more crowded and more horrible; but they
had lost their hold. He was tired of looking at them.

About five o'clock he turned abruptly and went back to the village the
same way by which he came.

And as he swung down the hill road in sight of Renton, suddenly there
was a great clearance in his soul.

When he went into the cottage he found Veronica there waiting for him.
She sat with her hands lying in her lap, and she had the same look he
had seen when she was in the train.

"Ronny--"

She stood up to greet him, as if it had been she who was staying there
and he who had incredibly arrived.

"They told me you wouldn't be long," she said.

"I? You haven't come because you were ill or anything?"

She smiled and shook her head. "No. Not for anything like that."

"I didn't write, Ronny. I couldn't."

"I know." Their eyes met, measuring each other's grief. "That's why I
came. I couldn't bear to leave you to it."

       *       *       *       *       *

"I'd have come before, Michael, if you'd wanted me."

They were sitting together now, on the settle by the hearth-place.

"I can't understand your being able to think of me," he said.

"Because of Nicky? If I haven't got Nicky it's all the more reason why I
should think of his people."

He looked up. "I say--how are they? Mother and Father?"

"They're very brave.

"It's worse for them than it is for me," she said. "What they can't bear
is your going."

"Mother got my letter, then?"

"Yes. This morning."

"What did she say?"

"She said: 'Oh, no. _Not_ Michael.'

"It was a good thing you wrote, though. Your letter made her cry. It
made even Dorothy cry. They hadn't been able to, before."

"I should have thought if they could stand Nicky's going--"

"That was different. They know it was different."

"Do you suppose _I_ don't know how different it was? They mean I funked
it and Nicky didn't."

"They mean that Nicky got what he wanted when he went, and that there
was nothing else he could have done so well, except flying, or
engineering."

"It comes to the same thing, Nicky simply wasn't afraid."

"Yes, Michael, he _was_ afraid."

"What _of_?"

"He was most awfully afraid of seeing suffering."

"Well, so am I. And I'm afraid of suffering myself too. I'm afraid of
the whole blessed thing from beginning to end."

"That's because you keep on seeing the whole blessed thing from
beginning to end. Nicky only saw little bits of it. The bits he liked.
Machine-guns working beautifully, and shells dropping in the right
places, and trenches being taken.

"And then, remember--Nicky hadn't so much to give up."

"He had you."

"Oh, no. He knew that was the way to keep me."

"Ronny--if Nicky had been like me could he have kept you?"

She considered it.

"Yes--if he could have been himself too."

"He couldn't, you see. He never could have felt like that."

"I don't say He could."

"Well--the awful thing is 'feeling like that.'"

"And the magnificent thing is 'feeling like that,' and going all the
same. Everybody knows that but you, Michael."

"Yes," he said. "I'm _going_. But I'm not going to lie about it and say
I don't funk it. Because I do."

"You don't _really_."

"I own I didn't the first night--the night I knew Nicky was killed.
Because I couldn't think of anything else _but_ Nicky.

"It was after I'd written to Mother that it came on. Because I knew then
I couldn't back out of it. That's what I can't get over--my having to do
that--to clinch it--because I was afraid."

"My dear, my dear, thousands of men do that every day for the same
reason, only they don't find themselves out; and if they did they
wouldn't care. You're finding yourself out all the time, and killing
yourself with caring."

"Of course I care. Can't you see it proves that I never meant to go at
all?"

"It proves that you knew you'd have to go through hell first and you
were determined that even hell shouldn't keep you back."

"Ronny--that's what it _has_ been. Simply hell. It's been inconceivable.
Nothing--absolutely nothing out there could be as bad. It went on all
yesterday and to-day--till you came."

"I know, Michael. That's why I came."

"To get me out of it?"

"To get you out of it.

"It's all over," she said.

"It may come back--out there."

"It won't. Out there you'll be happy. I saw Nicky on Sunday--the minute
before he was killed, Michael. And he was happy."

"He would be." He was silent for a long time.

"Ronny. Did Nicky know I funked it?"

"Never! He knew you wouldn't keep out. All he minded was your missing
any of it."

She got up and put on her hat. "I must go. It's getting late. Will you
walk up to Morfe with me? I'm sleeping there. In the hotel."

"No, I say--I'm not going to let you turn out for me. _I_'ll sleep at
the hotel."

She smiled at him with a sort of wonder, as if she thought: "Has he
forgotten, so soon?" And he remembered.

"I can't stop here," she said. "That would be more than even _I_ can
bear."

He thought: "She's gone through hell herself, to get me out of it."

          May, 1916.
     B.E.F., FRANCE.

DEAREST MOTHER AND FATHER,--Yes, "Captain," please. (I can hardly
believe it myself, but it is so.) It was thundering good luck getting
into dear old Nicky's regiment. The whole thing's incredible. But
promotion's nothing. Everybody's getting it like lightning now. You're
no sooner striped than you're starred.

I'm glad I resisted the Adjutant and worked up from the ranks. I own it
was a bit beastly at the time--quite as beastly as Nicky said it would
be; but it was worth while going through with it, especially living in
the trenches as a Tommy. There's nothing like it for making you know
your men. You can tell exactly what's going to bother them, and what
isn't. You've got your finger on the pulse of their morale--not that
it's jumpier than yours; it isn't--and their knowing that they haven't
got to stand anything that you haven't stood gives you no end of a pull.
Honestly, I don't believe I could have faced them if it wasn't for that.
So that _your_ morale's the better for it as well as theirs. You know,
if you're shot down this minute it won't matter. The weediest Tommy in
your Company can "carry on."

_We_'re a funny crowd in my billet all risen from the ranks except my
Senior. John would love us. There's a chap who writes short stories and
goes out very earnestly among the corpses to find copy; and there's
another who was in the publishing business and harks back to it, now and
then, in a dreamy nostalgic way, and rather as if he wanted to rub it
into us writing chaps what he _could_ do for us, only he wouldn't; and
there's a tailor who swears he could tell a mile off where my tunic came
from; and a lawyer's clerk who sticks his cigarette behind his ear. (We
used to wonder what he'd do with his revolver till we saw what he did
with it.) They all love thinking of what they've been and telling you
about it. I almost wish I'd gone into Daddy's business. Then perhaps I'd
know what it feels like to go straight out of a shop or an office into
the most glorious Army in history.

I forgot the Jew pawnbroker at least we _think_ he's a pawnbroker--who's
always inventing things; stupendous and impossible things. His last idea
was machine-howitzers fourteen feet high, that take in shells exactly as
a machine-gun takes in bullets. He says "You'll see them in the next
War." When you ask him how he's going to transport and emplace and hide
his machine-howitzers, he looks dejected, and says "I never thought of
_that_," and has another idea at once, even more impossible.

That reminds me. I've seen the "Tanks" (Nicky's Moving Fortresses) in
action. I'd give my promotion if only he could have seen them too. We
mustn't call them Fortresses any more--they're most violently for
attack. As far as I can make out Nicky's and Drayton's thing was
something between these and the French ones; otherwise one might have
wondered whether their plans and models really did go where John says
they did! I wish I could believe that Nicky and Drayton really _had_ had
a hand in it.

I'm most awfully grieved to hear that young Vereker's reported missing.
Do you remember how excited he used to be dashing about the lawn at
tennis, and how Alice Lathom used to sit and look at him, and jump if
you brought her her tea too suddenly? Let's hope we'll have finished up
this damned War before they get little Norris.

Love to Dorothy and Don and Ronny.--Your loving, MICK.

When Frances read that letter she said, "I wonder if he really is all
right. He says very little about himself."

And Anthony said, "Then you may be sure he is."

          May 31st, 1916.
     B.E.F., FRANCE.

MY DEAR RONNY,--I'm glad Mummy and Father have got all my letters. They
won't mind my writing to you this time. It really _is_ your turn now.
Thanks for Wadham's "Poems" (I wish they'd been Ellis's). It's a shame
to laugh at Waddy--but--he _has_ spread himself over Flanders, hasn't
he? Like the inundations round Ypres.

I'm most awfully touched at Dad and Mummy wanting to publish mine. Here
they all are--just as I wrote them, in our billet, at night or in the
early morning, when the others were sleeping and I wasn't. I don't know
whether they're bad or good; I haven't had time to think about them. It
all seems so incredibly far away. Even last week seems far away. You go
on so fast here.

I'd like Ellis and Monier-Owen to see them and to weed out the bad ones.
But you mustn't ask them to do anything. They haven't time, either. I
think you and Dorothy and Dad will manage it all right among you. If you
don't I shan't much care.

Of course I'm glad that they've taken you on at the Hampstead Hospital,
if it makes you happier to nurse. And I'm glad Dad put his foot down on
your going to Vera. She gave you up to my people and she can't take you
back now. I'm sorry for her though; so is he.

Have I had any adventures "by myself"? Only two. (I've given up what
Mother calls my "not wanting to go to the party.") One came off in "No
Man's Land" the other night. I went out with a "party" and came back by
myself--unless you count a damaged Tommy hanging on to me. It began in
pleasurable excitement and ended in some perturbation, for I had to get
him in under cover somehow, and my responsibility weighed on me--so did
he. The other was ages ago in a German trench. I was by myself, because
I'd gone in too quick, and the "party" behind me took the wrong turning.
I did manage to squeeze a chilly excitement out of going on alone. Then
I bumped up against a fat German officer and his revolver. That really
was an exquisite moment, and I was beast enough to be glad I had it all
to myself. It meant a bag of fifteen prisoners--all my own. But that was
nothing; they'd have surrendered to a mouse. There was no reason why
they shouldn't, because I'd fired first and there was no more officer to
play up to.

But the things you don't do by yourself are a long way the best.
Nothing--not even poetry--can beat an infantry charge when you're
leading it. That's because of your men. It feels as if you were drawing
them all up after you. Of course you aren't. They're coming on their
own, and you're simply nothing, only a little unimportant part of
them--even when you're feeling as if you were God Almighty.

I'm afraid it _does_ look awfully as if young Vereker were killed. They
may hear, you know, in some roundabout way--through the Red Cross, or
some of his men. I've written to them.

Love to everybody. Certainly you may kiss Nanna for me, if she'd like
it. I wish I liked Waddy more--when you've given him to me.--Always your
affectionate,

     MICHAEL.

P.S.--I don't sound pleased about the publication; but I am. I can't get
over their wanting to do it. I thought they didn't care.

Ronny--I've been such a beast to them--when Father tried to read my
stuff--bless him!--and couldn't, I used to wish to God he'd leave it
alone. And now I'd give anything to see his dear old paws hanging on to
it and twitching with fright, and his eyes slewing round to see if I'm
looking at him.

          June 14th, 1916.
     B.E.F., FRANCE.

MY DEAR RONNY,--I'm glad you like them, and I'm glad Father thinks he
"understands Michael's poems" this time, and I'm glad they've made
Mother and Dorothy feel happier about me--BUT--they must get it out of
their heads that they're my "message," or any putrescent thing of that
sort. The bare idea of writing a message, or of being supposed to write
a message, makes me sick. I know it's beastly of me, but, really I'd
rather they weren't published at all, if there's the smallest chance of
their being taken that way.

But if Ellis is doing the introduction there isn't the smallest chance.
Thank God for Ellis.

There--I've let off all my beastliness.

And now I'll try to answer your letter. Yes; the "ecstasy" in the last
two poems _is_ Nicky's ecstasy. And as Ellis says it strikes him as
absolutely real, I take it that some of Nicky's "reality" has got
through. It's hard on Ellis that he has to take _his_ ecstasy from me,
instead of coming out and getting it for himself.

But you and Nicky and Lawrence are right. It _is_ absolutely real. I
mean it has to do with absolute reality. With God. It hasn't anything to
do with having courage, or not having courage; it's another state of
mind altogether. It isn't what Nicky's man said it was--you're not
ashamed of it the next day. It isn't excitement; you're not excited. It
isn't a tingling of your nerves; they don't tingle. It's all curiously
quiet and steady. You remember when you saw Nicky--how everything stood
still? And how two times were going on, and you and Nicky were in one
time, and Mother was in the other? Well--it's like that. Your body and
its nerves aren't in it at all. Your body may be moving violently, with
other bodies moving violently round it; but _you_'re still.

But suppose it is your nerves. Why should they tingle at just that
particular moment, the moment that makes _animals_ afraid? Why should
you be so extraordinarily happy? Why should the moment of extreme danger
be always the "exquisite" moment? Why not the moment of safety?

Doesn't it look as if danger were the point of contact with reality, and
death the closest point? You're through. Actually you lay hold on
eternal life, and you know it.

Another thing--it always comes with that little shock of recognition.
It's happened before, and when you get near to it again you know what it
is. You keep on wanting to get near it, wanting it to happen again. You
may lose it the next minute, but you know. Lawrence knew what it was.
Nicky knew.

       *       *       *       *       *

     June 19th.

I'm coming back to it--after that interruption--because I want to get
the thing clear. I have to put it down as I feel it; there's no other
way. But they mustn't think it's something that only Lawrence and Nicky
and I feel. The men feel it too, even when they don't know what it is.
And some of them _do_ know.

Of course we shall be accused of glorifying War and telling lies about
it. Well--there's a Frenchman who has told the truth, piling up all the
horrors, faithfully, remorselessly, magnificently. But he seems to think
people oughtn't to write about this War at all unless they show up the
infamy of it, as a deterrent, so that no Government can ever start
another one. It's a sort of literary "frightfulness." But who is he
trying to frighten? Does he imagine that France, or England, or Russia
or Belgium, or Serbia, will want to start another war when this is over?
And does he suppose that Germany--if we don't beat her--will be deterred
by his frightfulness? Germany's arrogance will be satisfied when she
knows she's made a Frenchman feel like that about it.

He's got his truth all right. As Morrie would say: "That's War." But a
peaceful earthquake can do much the same thing. And if _our_ truth--what
_we_'ve seen--isn't War, at any rate it's what we've got out of it, it's
our "glory," our spiritual compensation for the physical torture, and
there would be a sort of infamy in trying to take it from us. It isn't
the French Government, or the British that's fighting Germany; it's
we--all of us. To insist on the world remembering nothing but these
horrors is as if men up to their knees in the filth they're clearing
away should complain of each other for standing in it and splashing
it about.

The filth of War--and the physical torture--Good God! As if the world
was likely to forget it. Any more than we're likely to forget what
_we_ know.

You remember because you've known it before and it all hangs together.
It's not as if danger were the only point of contact with reality. You
get the same ecstasy, the same shock of recognition, and the same utter
satisfaction when you see a beautiful thing. At least to me it's like
that. You know what Nicky thought it was like. You know what it was like
when you used to sit looking and looking at Mother's "tree of Heaven."

It's odd, Ronny, to have gone all your life trying to get reality,
trying to get new beauty, trying to get utter satisfaction; to have
funked coming out here because you thought it was all obscene ugliness
and waste and frustration, and then to come out, and to find what
you wanted.

       *       *       *       *       *

     June 25th.

I wrote all that, while I could, because I want to make them see it.
It's horrible that Dorothy should think that Drayton's dead and that
Mother should think that Nicky's dead, when they wouldn't, if they
really knew. If they don't believe Lawrence or me, can't they believe
Nicky? I'm only saying what he said. But I can't write to them about it
because they make me shy, and I'm afraid they'll think I'm only gassing,
or "making poetry"--as if poetry wasn't the most real thing there is!

If anybody can make them see it, you can.--Always your affectionate,

     MICHAEL.



XXV

Anthony was going into the house to take back the key of the workshop.

He had locked the door of the workshop a year ago, after Nicky's death,
and had not opened it again until to-day. This afternoon in the orchard
he had seen that the props of the old apple-tree were broken and he had
thought that he would like to make new ones, and the wood was in
the workshop.

Everything in there was as it had been when Nicky finished with his
Moving Fortress. The brass and steel filings lay in a heap under the
lathe, the handle was tilted at the point where he had left it; pits in
the saw-dust showed where his feet had stood. His overalls hung over the
bench where he had slipped them off.

Anthony had sat down on the bench and had looked at these things with
remembrance and foreboding. He thought of Nicky and of Nicky's pleasure
and excitement over the unpacking of his first lathe--the one he had
begged for for his birthday--and of his own pleasure and excitement as
he watched his boy handling it and showing him so cleverly how it
worked. It stood there still in the corner. Nicky had given it to
Veronica. He had taught her how to use it. And Anthony thought of
Veronica when she was little; he saw Nicky taking care of her, teaching
her to run and ride and play games. And he remembered what Veronica's
mother had said to him and Frances: "Wait till Nicky has children of
his own."