I don't know whether it's fair or not. I write as he compels me to write.
I find that I cannot separate his joy and his adventure from his duty and
devotion and self-sacrifice; he didn't separate them himself. I don't
even know that self-sacrifice is really the word for it; and the
impression he gave me is just that--of going out for fun. It was the wild
humour of his devotion that made it the spectacle it was.

(She has told me that it's all right, so long as I recognize that it
_was_ devotion.)

After Lokeren I had no desire to go through the rest of the war with
Jimmy. To be with Jimmy was destruction to your sense of values. I have
got it firmly fixed in my head that the taking of Lokeren was an
important affair.

As for what Jimmy called the "tinpot bombardment of Melle" (there was
nothing wrong with _his_ sense of values), I shall see it insanely, for
ever and ever, as _the_ event of the war.

And there is this to be said, that Lokeren filled the last gap in the
line closing round Ghent, north, south and east, and drew it tighter. And
Melle (only four and a-half miles away) was the last point in the German
advance on Ghent. The taking of Melle would be a sign to us that the game
was up.

For three days Jimmy operated joyously in the village and over the
leagues of turnip-fields that lay outside it.

Of the first two days I remember an endless tramping over endless furrows
that were ditches for the dead; an endless staggering under stretchers
that dripped blood; an endless struggling with Viola to keep her under
shelter of the walls; each of those acts seemed to be endless, though one
gave place to the other, and it was only the firing that went on all the
time, till even Jimmy complained once or twice that he was fed up with
it.

I remember that Jimmy's Field Ambulance played a great part in these
adventures. I remember feeling a malicious satisfaction in the thought
that at the same time it was compelled to witness _his_ performances. It
couldn't miss him.

I remember all these things; but of Melle itself I remember nothing but
the Town Hall, with its double flight of steps up to its door, and the
two tall stone pillars, one on each side of the door, and the Greek
pediment above it; that and the little old Flemish house that stood back
by itself on the other side of the road, and its white walls and its
red-tiled roof, and the two green poplars in its garden, mounting guard.
The house and its garden and its poplars are always vivid and still; they
always appear to me as charged with mystery and significance and as
connected in some secret way with Jimmy's fate.

In the pauses of our movements the Field Ambulance and Jimmy's car and
Viola's were always drawn up before the Town Hall, facing the little
house.

Then came Sunday, the eleventh, the third day of Melle, when Viola was
left behind at Ghent.

Jimmy had made her promise on her honour to be brave, _this_ time, and
stay in the hotel and wait for orders.

Colville stayed with her. They were to pack our things and be ready to
leave at a minute's notice. Colville had secret orders that, if we were
not back by midnight, he was to take Viola on to Bruges in his car, and
wait for us there.

For we knew now that we were in for it.

And we knew that the war, which was coming closer and closer to the
city, was coming closer to us. It had been Charlie Thesiger first,
now it might be Reggie. At least, we knew that Reggie's regiment, the
Third ----shires, had come up from Ostend the day before, that it was
quartered somewhere between Ghent and Melle, and that it had been engaged
at Quatrecht.

Our own orders were to stick to Melle.

I suppose from the way the ambulances were massed there that the end
had been foreseen. That afternoon the battle began to sweep round from
Quatrecht to Melle; and on our third journey out a rumour reached us
at the barrier where the sentry stood guard. It was one of those
preposterous rumours that run before disaster and are started God knows
how when a retreat begins. I think it was the Belgian Red Cross men who
spread it, for I heard the guide who went with Jimmy's Field Ambulance
assuring him seriously that seven thousand British had been surrounded
and cut to pieces on the road between Quatrecht and Melle. To be sure the
number diminished with each repetition of the tale, dropping from seven
thousand to seven hundred and from seven hundred to seventy. But in
another hour we were bringing in the men of the ----shires.

And towards the end of the day the real bombardment of Melle began, and
on our last journey out we and Jimmy's Field Ambulance were in the thick
of it.

I can remember nothing of that bombardment but the three shells.

The first ripped open the roof of the Town Hall and set fire to it.

The second struck the Greek pediment and brought the whole front toppling
into the street.

Then, about five minutes after, there was the third shell.

The light was going out of the sky, so that we saw the first shell like a
sheet of curved lightning making for the village as we approached from
the Ghent side. There was a deadly attraction about the thing that made
you feel that it and you were the only objects in God's universe, and
that you were about to be merged in each other. It looked as if it were
rushing out of heaven straight for us, so that we were surprised when it
apparently swerved aside and hit the Town Hall instead.

(Jimmy and I were in the front of the car. Kendal, whose flesh wound was
beginning to worry him, sat behind.)

A battery of artillery charged past us, followed by the remnants of a
French regiment on the run. Jimmy put more speed on. By the time we got
into the village the Town Hall was spouting flame.

Jimmy drew up his car about fifty yards away from it. The Field Ambulance
had turned, and took its stand a little further away behind us, under the
cover of the opposite walls. Its men began dragging out their stretchers.
Kendal and I made ready with ours. The wounded were being brought out of
every house they were in.

A Belgian Colonel rode past us, trying to look unaware that he was
retreating. He shouted to us to clear out of it. This was the only sign
of interest that he showed.

Somebody else came up to Jevons and told him that there were three or
four wounded men somewhere inside the Town Hall, but that the place was
on fire and it was absolutely impossible to get them out. He advised us
to pick up the men who were lying in the street, and clear out.

I saw Jevons nod his head as if he agreed and consented. I saw him get
out of the car. And then I heard Kendal say, "Give us a hand, sir," and I
turned to my stretchers.

When I looked round again Jevons was running towards the Town Hall. The
man who had told us to pick up our wounded and clear out was looking
after him with a face of the most perfect horror.

Kendal and I followed with the stretchers, and we saw Jevons run up the
steps of the Town Hall. He turned at the top of the steps and waved to us
to keep back.

Then he went through the big doors between the pillars.

There was a crash and a roar as if the whole building had fallen in. It
was the top story plunging to the second floor. The upper half of the
Town Hall was like a crate filled with blazing straw. The Greek pediment
was the only solid thing that subsisted in that fire.

Then the first floor was caught. It burned more slowly.

Kendal and I and the ambulance men ran forward with the stretchers. And
Jimmy came through the doors carrying a wounded Frenchman. He went in
again and came out with another Frenchman.

(The ground floor had begun to burn behind him.)

He went in a third time and came out with Reggie Thesiger.

He must have had to go further into the hall to find him, for it was a
much longer business. We, Kendal and I, were down the street by the
ambulance when they came out, and I didn't see that it was Reggie till I
heard Kendal say, "Sir, that's Major Thesiger he's got!"

Reggie's arm was round Jimmy's shoulder and Jimmy's arm was round
Reggie's waist. He half carried, half supported him. He came out in the
middle of a cloud of smoke that hid him. The smoke was followed by a
burst of fire and another crash and roar as the ceiling of the first
story plunged to the ground floor.

With all this going on behind him Jevons paused on the top of the steps
to readjust his burden to the descent. We heard afterwards that Reggie
had said, "You'd better leave me, old man, and scoot. You can't do it."

It didn't look as if he could. But as we went back to them we saw that
Jevons had heaved Reggie over his shoulder and was carrying him down the
steps. He came very carefully and slowly, so that we had reached the Town
Hall before he had staggered to the last step.

As we pressed closer to help him he told us to get back if we didn't want
the whole damned place down on the top of us.

We gave back and he followed us. I don't know how we got Reggie on to the
stretcher--he had a piece of shell somewhere in his thigh--but we did it
and ran with him to the ambulance. We had about a minute to do it in and
no more.

And then the second shell came.

It hit the Greek pediment from behind, and we saw the two tall pillars
that supported it stagger, snap like two sticks, and bend forwards,
looking suddenly queer and corpulent in their fore-shortening; then they
parted and fell, bringing down the whole front of the Town Hall.

The Town Hall was spreading itself over the street, with a noise like a
ship's coal going down the shute in a thunderstorm, as Reggie's stretcher
slid home along its grooves in the ambulance. Kendal and I were inside
for a second or two doing things for Reggie. The engine throbbed. The
whole ambulance shook with its throbbing.

In that second Jevons had run back to fetch his car, calling out to us to
cut and he would overtake us. He had cranked up his engines and jumped in
before Kendal could get down and go to his help. When we saw him start we
started. There wasn't any time to lose.

Kendal and I were sitting on the back steps of the ambulance, so that we
kept him in sight. It was quite certain that he would overtake us.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was running straight down the middle of the road when the third shell
came.

It burst on the ground behind him, on his right, a little to one side.
Some of it must have struck the steering gear.

The car plunged to the left. It climbed reeling to the top of a bank and
paused there, then fell, front over back, into the ditch and lay there,
belly uppermost, and its wheels whirling in the air.

Jevons lay on his face, half in, half out of the ditch.

He lay for about three seconds; then, as we ran to him, we saw him raise
himself on his left arm and crawl out of the ditch; and when we reached
him he was trying to stand.

And he tried to smile at us. "You needn't look like that," he said. "I'm
as right as rain." And then he tried to raise his right arm.

You saw a khaki cuff, horribly stained. A red rag hung from it, a fringe
that dripped.

       *       *       *       *       *

Reggie opened his eyes and turned his face towards the stretcher that
slid into its grooves beside him.

"That isn't--Jimmy--is it?" he said.

I saw him move his left hand to find Jimmy's right. And I heard Jimmy
saying again (in a weak voice this time) that he was as right as rain.

We had got out of the range of the guns and the surgeons had done their
business with bandages and splints. They had taken Reggie first, then
Jimmy.

And so, lying beside Reggie, on his own stretcher and in his own
ambulance, he was brought back to Ghent.

The military hospitals were full, so we took them to the Convent de Saint
Pierre. And I went over to the HГґtel de la Poste to fetch Viola.

I don't know what I said to her. I think I must have done what Jimmy told
me and said they were all right. _She_ never said a word till we got to
the Convent. (She told me afterwards that when she saw me coming in alone
she had been sure that Jimmy was killed. She didn't know about Reggie
yet, you see.)

This part of it is all confused and horrible.

We had to wait before we could see our surgeons at the Convent. The nuns
took us into a little parlour and left us there.

And I told her then what had happened. I can see her sitting in the nuns'
parlour, looking out of the window as I told her; looking as if she
wasn't listening. And I can hear my own voice. It sounded strange and
affected, as if I had made it all up and didn't believe what I was
telling her.

"He saved Reggie's life--do you see? at the risk of his own.

"At--the risk--of his own."

And still she looked as if she wasn't listening. It didn't sound as if it
had really happened.

And I feel--now--as if I had taken hours to tell her.

Then one of our men came to us. He drew back when he saw Mrs. Jevons, and
I followed him to the doorway. He said they were busy with Major
Thesiger. They hadn't started yet with Mr. Jevons.

And then--ages afterwards--one of the surgeons came and called me out of
the room. He said the Major would be all right. They'd got the bit of
shell out. But--there was Jevons's hand. They'd have to take it off.
They couldn't possibly save it. And it was going to be a beastly
business. They'd run out of anaesthetics. Thesiger had had the last
they'd got.

Yes, of course it would have been better. But Jevons wouldn't hear of it.
_He_ knew they were short and Thesiger didn't, and he'd insisted on their
doing Thesiger first.

It was an awful mistake, he said, because it would hurt Jevons ten times
more than it would hurt anybody else. He thought that I had better get
Mrs. Jevons out of that room; the ward where they were operating was next
to it.

I couldn't get her out of it.

There were five minutes when I sat there and Viola crouched on the floor
beside me with her face hidden on my knees and her hands grabbing me
tighter and tighter.

And the door opened and I saw two nuns looking in. I heard one say to
another, "_C'est sa pauvre femme qui devient folle_." And the door closed
on us.

       *       *       *       *       *

"All that fuss about a hand!" Jimmy had come out of his faint and was
trying to restore Viola to a sense of proportion. If all the rest of him
had been blown away, he said, by that confounded shell, and only his hand
had been left, she might have had something to cry for.

And yet she cried inconsolably for Jimmy's hand.

God knows what memories came to her when she thought of it. I don't think
she thought of it as the hand that had written masterpieces and flung
them aside, that could steer a car straight through hell-fire, and that
could nurse, and bind up wounds. I know I thought of all these obvious
things. But she must have thought of the hand that she knew like her own
hand, the hand with the firm, nervous fingers, and the three strong lines
in the pinkish palm, the hand she adored and had shrunk from, whose
gesture had been torture to her and whose touch was ecstasy, the hand
that the surgeons had cut off and tossed into a basket to be cast out
with the refuse of the wards.

Not that either of us had much time for thinking of anything but how we
could get out of Ghent before the Germans got into it. Viola said it
would be quite easy. There was the ambulance, and there was _her_ car and
there was Jimmy's car.

I told her that Jimmy's god-like car was lying bottom upwards in a ditch
between Ghent and Melle, an object half piteous, half obscene. She said
it was a jolly good thing then that she'd brought hers. Perhaps it was.

We had just got Jimmy and Reggie into their first sleep at six o'clock in
the morning when the orders came for us to clear out.

We cleared out in Viola's car, with Reggie on his stretcher and Jimmy
(propped up with pillows) at his head, and Viola at his feet, and two
wounded men in front with Colville, and Kendal and me standing one on
each step. (Most of our luggage was on the Boulevard in front of the
Convent where we had left it.)

We went, as we had come, through Bruges. We drew up to rest in the Market
Place under the Belfry.

"You'd better look at it while you can, Viola," said Jevons. "You may
never see it again."

"I? I shall never see anything else," she said.

We looked at the Belfry. It was as if, under that menace of destruction,
we saw it for the first time.

We _might_ have enjoyed that run back, Viola said; only somehow we
didn't. Reggie was ill from his anesthetic all the way, and Jimmy's
temperature went up with every mile, and we missed the boat at Ostend,
and had to stay there all night; and Jimmy became delirious in the night
and thought that he had left Viola behind in the Town Hall at Melle. And
there was no room on the morning boat; and when we did get on board the
Naval Transport at Dunkirk, Kendal took it into his head to be seasick
till he nearly died.

We had no peace till seven o'clock on Tuesday, when we got to Canterbury.




XV


I think I have said that Jevons made me suffer. He did. I can say that
before those three weeks of his all my contacts with him were infected by
the poison of my suffering. But all that was nothing to what he made me
suffer since, what I suffer now when I remember the things I have said of
him, the things I have thought and felt--my furtive belittling of him, my
unwilling admiration, the doubt that I encouraged in the mean hope that
it would become a certainty.

I would give anything to be like the Canon or my wife, the only two of us
whose conscience doesn't reproach them when they see Jimmy's right
sleeve.

I remember Norah saying to me once, "I shall be sorry for _you_ if you
don't take care." Well, I am sorry for myself.

But I am still sorrier for Mrs. Thesiger.

I know there's a great deal to be said for her. I had wired to them from
Dunkirk to tell them that Reggie was slightly wounded but recovering, and
that the four of us would be in Canterbury that evening. It wasn't my
fault if Reggie, being a British officer, was taken from us at Dover, and
sent to a military hospital; but I admit I ought to have wired again to
the Thesigers to inform them of the fact. I ought to have remembered that
Reggie was more important to Mrs. Thesiger than Jevons, even if Jevons
had done what Mrs. Thesiger didn't yet know he'd done.

The maternal passion is a terrible thing. It has made women commit
crimes. It made my mother-in-law push Viola from her on her threshold and
turn on me as I was helping Jimmy out of the car. It made her say,
"You've brought my son-in-law. What have you done with my son?"

(To do her justice, she hadn't seen what had happened to Jimmy. Though he
was tired and weak, he could still stand up and stagger along if you held
him tight.)

And the maternal passion is not more terrible than the passion that Viola
had for Jevons. It made her say to her mother as the Canon and I brought
Jimmy in (the dear old man had seen in an instant why he wore his coat
slung loose over his right shoulder), "You can see what we're doing with
my husband."

And when we were all in the drawing-room and I was explaining gently that
Reggie was all right, but that we'd _had_ to send him to the military
hospital, it made her say, "If it wasn't for your son-in-law your son
wouldn't be alive."

God knows what thirst she satisfied, what bitterness she exhausted, what
secret anguish she avenged.

They were all there, the Thesiger women--they had come, you see, to meet
Reggie--Victoria and Millicent and Mildred; and they heard her. But it
was Mildred who _saw_. She spoke to her mother.

"Can't you _see_?" she said.

Viola was kneeling by the sofa where her father had made Jimmy lie, and
she had unbuttoned and taken from him his heavy coat. She looked at me
and said, "Please take them away somewhere and tell them. Jimmy _is_ so
tired."

I know that must seem awful. It _was_ awful to come back from the
battlefields of Flanders, from sieges and sackings and slaughter, and see
the women flashing fire at each other. And they were mother and daughter.
But, you see, they were women. I know that the war should have purged
them of their passions (perhaps it did purge them); but your lover is
your lover and your son your son for all that.

And it wasn't easy for Mrs. Thesiger to see how her son-in-law could
have saved her son. I am not sure that she wouldn't have thought it
presumption in Jevons to suppose that he could save anybody, let alone
her son. There were people like the Thesigers from whom heroism was
expected as a matter of course; and there were people like Jevons. You
know what she said about his going to the front.

When I had finished the tale--and I let her have the whole of it, from
the first shell that hit the Town Hall to the bit of the third shell
that hit Jimmy--she said, "You mean that if he hadn't gone back for his
car--" She had broken down and was sobbing quietly, but you could see how
her mind worked.

I said, "I mean that if he hadn't gone back to the Town Hall to look for
Reggie he wouldn't have been hit."

Then I told her how they took Jimmy's hand off.

I heard the Canon groan. Millicent and Victoria began to sob as their
mother had sobbed. Mildred set her teeth firmly; and Mrs. Thesiger turned
to me a queer, disordered face, and spoke.

"They--they gave the anaesthetic to--Reggie?"

"They did," I said. "Because Jimmy made them."

Yes. I am very sorry for Mrs. Thesiger.

She cried, softly, and with a great recovery of beauty and dignity, for
about fifteen seconds (the Canon had gone back to Jevons); then she rose
and addressed her daughter.

"Mildred dear, I think Jimmy had better have Reggie's room."

Then she went to him; and I am told that she kissed him for the first
time. She kissed him as if he had been her son. (Poor Jimmy, I may say,
was so tired that he didn't want to be kissed by anybody.)

       *       *       *       *       *

He still had Reggie's room six weeks later when I came back from France
for a week-end. Reggie had recovered, and was with them for a fortnight's
leave before he went out again.

Norah and I went down on Saturday to see him. (His leave was up on Sunday
night.)

Without Reggie I don't think I should have realized Jevons in his final
phase.

He had been happy, I know, at Hampstead in the first two years of his
marriage; he had been happy most of the time in Edwardes Square; even in
Mayfair he had had moments; and Amershott had been, on the whole, an
improvement on Mayfair. And he had lived through his three weeks in Ghent
in a sort of ecstasy. And before that, all the time, there had been his
work, which I am always forgetting, and his fame, when he didn't forget
it.

But there had always been something.

At first it had been the Thesigers. As long as Mrs. Thesiger--as long
as _one_ Thesiger--held out against him he had felt defeat. And then
there had been Reggie's return and his appalling doubt. He had pretended
not to see his doubt and not to mind it. And he had seen it, as he saw
everything, and he had minded awfully. Then came Viola's illness, which
you could put down to Reggie's doubt. And after that it had been Viola
pretty nearly all the time. And even at Ghent, by the tortures of anxiety
she had caused him, you may say that she had spoiled his ecstasy.

And now, without any effort, or any calculation or foresight, by a
stupendous accident, he had found happiness and peace and certainty. The
thing was so consummately done, and so timed to the minute, that when you
saw him there enjoying it, you could have sworn that he had played for it
and pulled it off. It was as if he had said to himself, "Give me time,
and I'll bring all these people round, even Mrs. Thesiger, even Reggie.
I'll _make_ them love me. Wait, and you'll just see how I shall score."

And there he was scoring.

And it was as if he had said to himself long ago, "As for Viola, I know
all about it. I know I do things that make the poor child shudder; but I
can put that all right. I can make her forget it. I give myself three
weeks." As if he said, "She thought she was going to leave me. I knew
that, too, and I didn't care. She might have left me a thousand times and
I should have brought her back."

I used to think it pathetic that Jevons should have wanted Mrs. Thesiger
to love him--that he should have wanted Reggie to. But I must say his
pathos was avenged. _They_ were pathetic now. That big, hulking Major
wasn't happy unless he was writing Jimmy's letters, or cutting up Jimmy's
meat for him, or helping him in and out of his clothes. Mrs. Thesiger
wasn't happy unless she was doing things for him. The Canon wasn't happy
(though, like Norah, he had nothing on his conscience) and Mildred and
Millicent and Victoria weren't happy, nor the Thesiger's friends in the
Cathedral Close.

And then--after they had made a hero of him for six weeks--on that
Saturday night when we were all together in the Canon's library, Jevons
made his confession.

We had been, exchanging reminiscences. Something had made Viola think of
Jimmy's General and the two Colonels at Ghent. She began telling the
Canon how we had watched them through the glass screen, and how funny
General Roubaix had looked with his arm round Jimmy's neck, and how he
had said that Jimmy was a salamander, and that he didn't know what fear
is.

"Oh, _don't_ I!" said Jimmy.

And that sent Reggie back to the day when he had first seen Jimmy.

"Look here, old man, what made you say you were an arrant coward?"

"Because," said Jimmy simply, "I am one. Dear old Roubaix was talking
through his hat.

"Not know what fear is! I know a good many things, but I don't know
anything better than that. You can't tell me anything about fear I don't
know.

"You've no idea how I funked going out to the war. Yes--_funked_.

"It wasn't any ordinary funk, mind you, the little, creepy feeling in
your waist, and your tummy tumbling down, and your heart sort of
fluttering over the place where it used to be. I believe you can get over
_that_. And I never had that--ever, except once when I saw Viola in a
place where she'd no business to be. It was something much worse. It--it
was in my head--in my brain. A sort of madness. And it never let me
alone. It was worse at night, and after I got up and began to go about in
the morning--when my brain woke and remembered, but it was there all the
time.

"I saw things--horrors. And I heard them. I saw and heard the whole
war. All the blessed time--all those infernal five weeks before I got
out to it, I kept seeing horrors and hearing them. There was a lot of
detail--realism wasn't in it--and it was all correct; because I verified
it afterwards. Things _were_ just like that. Every morning when I got up
I said to myself I'm going out to that damned war, but I wish to God
somebody'd come and chloroform me before I get there. There were moments
when I could have chloroformed myself. I felt as if it was the utter
injustice of God that I--_I_--had to be mixed up in it.

"Not know what fear is!

"Just conceive," said Jimmy, "a man living like that, in abject,
abominable terror, in black funk--keeping it up, all day and half the
night, for five solid weeks--before he got there."

"And when you did get there," said Reggie, "were you in a funk?"

"Oh, well, you see, by the time I'd got there it had pretty well worn
itself out. There wasn't any funk left to _be_ in."

And when I saw Reggie look at him I knew he had scored again.

Still, I wondered how it really stood with them; and whether Reggie
had settled with his doubt, or whether sometimes, when you caught him
looking at Jimmy, it had come over him again. The kind of virtue his
brother-in-law had displayed in Flanders wouldn't help him, you see, to
that particular solution. And with the Thesigers--when they took after
their mother--things died hard.

He must have felt that he had to settle it before he went.

Viola told us what happened.

It was his last evening, and the three were together in that room of
Reggie's. He had just said that Viola wouldn't care how many Town Halls
he was buried under, as long as Jimmy didn't go and dig him out. And
then, suddenly, he went straight for it.

"Jimmy," he said, "did you run away with my sister, or didn't you? I
don't care whether you did or not, but--did you?"

"No, I didn't," said Jimmy.

"Then what the dickens," Reggie said, "were you doing together in
Bruges?"

"We were looking at the Belfry," said Jimmy.

And Reggie shook his head. "That's beyond me," he said.

"Yes," said Viola. "But it wasn't beyond Jimmy."

That's the real story of Tasker Jevons and his wife.

Don't ask me what would have happened to them if there hadn't been a war.

I've tried to show you the sort of man he was. He knew his hour even
before it found him. And you cannot separate him from his hour.