Coningsby Dawson

“ Beneath the moonlight the chalk of the shell-ploughed battlefield creates the illusion of a country under snow, spreading beneath the velvet darkness for miles. The horses are impatient and refuse to be reined in. They need no guiding. With Fury in the lead, they leap trenches and take short-cuts where we would hesitate.
Ahead of us through the shadows we discover the battery drawn up in line, not a light or so much as a cigarette showing for fear our doings should be betrayed to the enemy planes. Heming rides out as we approach. ”

“ A Germanised world is like a glimpse of madness; the very thought strikes terror to the heart. Yet it is to Germanise the world that Germany is waging war to-day—that she may confer upon us the benefits of her own proved swinishness. There is nothing left for us but to fight for our souls like men.
The last war! We believed that at first, but as the years dragged on the certainty became an optimism, the optimism a dream which we well-nigh knew to be impossible. We have always known that we would beat Germany—we have never doubted that. ”

“ Across his shoulders, through the window behind him, fell a shaft of moonlight; in front of him, dazzling his eyes, was the redness of the glowing charcoal, and the yellow of the jumping flames; within hand-stretch to the right lay Spurling, with his feet toward the fire and his head within six inches of the threshold. In the great stillness which was outside, nothing was to be heard save the rustling of the snow as it bound tighter, and the occasional low booming of the trees as the frost, acting on the sap, bent their branches. ”

“ I'm sorry, dear.
As we older grow
There will come a day,
May its feet move slow,
When we, where the life-fields fade to gray
And the skies dance not, shall have naught to say,
Met by a Shadow,
In voices low,
But, "I'm sorry, God—
I did not know."
DREAMLAND LOVE Here in the Far Land of our own begetting,
Crouched on the haunted cliff begirt by sea,
Hushed in the murmurous swell of dim waves
fretting
Walls and sheer rocks which cradle you and me,
How shall we lisp of older worlds and cities?
How shall we sigh for newer worlds to be? ”

“ Dear old London—so kind, so brave, so frankly human! You're just like the chaps at the Front—you laugh when you suffer and give when you're starving; you never know when not to be generous. You wear your heart in your eyes and your lips are always ready for kissing, I think of you as one of your own flower-girls—hoarse of voice, slatternly as to corsets, with a big tumbled fringe over your forehead, and a heart so big that you can chuck away your roses to a wounded Tommy and go away yourself with an empty basket to sleep under an archway. ”

“ When the last sleepy caress had been given, all men who lacked the caution of the anchorite, were sooner or later destined to hear that cry.
How much nobler men had been in a womanless world! Some of them had had to become womanless before they could be noble. Pollock plunging to his death from the clouds, like an eagle struck by a thunderbolt! Lord Dawn with the smile of calm remembrance on his lips, purged of all his fruitless sex-contentions, lying white and quiet beneath the crack and spatter of exploding shells! Braithwaite, the ex-valet, who had proved himself an aristocrat in courage! ”

“ A romantic picture grows up in my mind of a blue night, the laughter of youth in evening dress, lamps twinkling through trees, far off the velvety shadow of water and mountains, and as a voice to it all, that air from La Tosca. I can believe that the silent people near by raise themselves up in their snow-beds to listen, each one recalling some ecstatic moment before the dream of life was shattered. ”

“ That night I sat by the quays at Rouen, observing the groups of men and women, always together, passing up and down. I saw how they drew frankly near to one another. I listened to their scraps of quiet conversation. The lazy laughter, now the hoarse brass of men’s voices, now the silver clearness of a woman’s, rose and fell. Below me barges from Paris creaked against the piles, and the golden Seine swept beneath the bridges, singing like a gay grisette. As night sank down I was stung to loneliness, thinking of the absence of Vi and Fiesole. ”

“ They came singing and twirling their caps on their bayonets, as if fear were an emotion unknown to their hearts. They came brushing through the wheat, following the tracks the tanks had made; they came cheering up the ravines and laughing along the high-road. They came carrying rifles, machine-guns, trench-mortars, bombs—all the filthy inventions war has brought to perfection, whereby one man may torture another. They stuck wild-flowers in their tunics, as if off on a holiday. They never once acknowledged by word or gesture that, life might hold for them no more to-morrows. ”

“ Life's a wonderful dream that lies all before you. You haven't known sorrow. Do you know what you seemed to be saying when you spoke to me through the shadows? 'Everybody has always loved and trusted me, so you love and trust me, too.' If it hadn't been for that, that I saw that you'd always been loved and were lonely for the moment, I shouldn't have sat here talking with you for the last hour. You'll get everything you want from life, if you'll only wait for it. ”

“ Every morning, the moment breakfast was ended, he climbed the many stairs to his room to work. From his window he could see his father in the studio, and the pigeons springing up like dreams from the garden and growing small above the battlements of house-tops. If he watched long enough, he might see Mr. Yaflfon come out on his steps, like an old tortoise that had wakened too early, thrusting its bewildered head out of its shell.
He wanted to work; he wanted to do something splendid. He longed more than he had ever longed before to make himself famous—famous that she might share his glory. ”

“ The battlefield itself stretches away all billowy with hay for miles and miles. When a puff of wind blows across it, it rustles like fire. The sides of the trenches are gay with poppies and cornflowers. The larks sing industriously overhead, and above them, like the hum of a swarm of bees, pass the fighting planes. Miles to the rear I can hear the strife of bands, playing their battalions up to the fine. A brave, queer, battling world! If one lives to be old, he will talk about these days and persuade himself that he longs to be back, if the time ever comes when life has lost its challenge. ”

“ So 'tis Lorenzo's song they sing to-night,
That haunting song which long years since he sang
When, with his gallants through the torch-
smirched dusk,
He laughing rode toward the Carnival,
And young girls loosened all abroad their hair
And flung up petals through the cool moonlight,
Some of which falling rested on his face,
Some of which falling covered up his eyes;
And girls there were who kissed his drooping
hands
And clasped his stirrups, begging him to stay,
To halt one little moment, stay with them:
"Life is so short. Delay with us a while." ”

“ Already the sun was leaping above the horizon, and the sigh of the waking forest was heard. Granger seized him by the arm and shook him—he had learnt only the least part of that which he desired to know. "Was it for that crime that you fled, till you came at last to Keewatin for safety?" he shouted. "Quick, Beorn, tell me. Why did you go to the Forbidden River?"
The eyes did not open; but, as if the soul were answering him with a last warning as it passed out of the door of the body, the lips stirred, "Ay, man, it's terrible—the things men give for gold." ”

“ The country lay windswept and golden in the sunshine. The air had the sharp tang of autumn—the acrid fragrance which foretells the decay of foliage. A pleasant melancholy lurked in the reds and yellows of woods and hedges. Tops of trees were already growing thin of leaves where the gales had harried them. Pasturing in harvested fields, flocks of sheep lent a touch of grayness to the landscape. Here and there overhead gulls hovered, or slid down the sky on poised wings, as though brooding on the summer that was gone.
Ruthita and I spoke of Lilith, recalling childhood’s days. ”

“ Were one to paint the spirit of this war he would depict a mud landscape, blasted trees, an iron sky; wading through the slush and shell-holes would come a file of bowed figures, more like outcasts from the Embankment than soldiers. They're loaded down like pack animals, their shoulders are rounded, they're wearied to death, but they go on and go on. There's no "To Glory" about what we're doing out here; there's no flash of swords or splendour of uniforms. There are only very tired men determined to carry on. ”

“ He had no courage to look ahead to any brightness in the future. The taste of the present was as ashes in his mouth. He felt old, disillusioned, exhausted. The grayness of the plunging wintry sea was the reflection of his soul’s gray loneliness.
He had spent so long in listening and waiting that listening and waiting had become a habit. He would hear the telephone tinkle soon. His heart would fly up like a bird into his throat. Her voice would steal to him across the distance: “Meester Deek, hulloa! What are we going to do this morning?” He often heard it in imagination. ”

“ It’s easy for the armchair crusaders who sit at home to prate about the glory of war. One glimpse at the landscape on which I gaze would bruise their lips with reality and wash the mountebank valour with tears from their eyes. We who have seen war for what it is, will always speak of it as the filthiest of jobs, fit only for human orang-outangs or maniacs. A woman risks her life that a man may be born. It takes twenty-five long years of love to build his mind and spirit into manliness. ”

“ The road which leads to and from Him is symbolic—shell-torn, scattered with dead horses and men, while ahead the snarl of shrapnel darts across the sky and spends itself in little fleecy puffs. All this desolation will be re-created one day, the country will grow green and, in another country, greener than any upon earth, those dead men will walk and laugh—and in that other country the Christ will no longer hang alone and aloofly. I like to think of that—of the beauty in the future, if not in this, then in some other world. One grows tired, just like that image on the Cross. ”

“ Passions we left, and fears, and youthful sinnings;
Virtues we left, and early signs of grace.
Dreamings we brought and beauty of the May-
time,
All else we flung to where Time's whirlwinds race.
Timeless are we in this our godlike play-time,
Since Sleep has led us gently face to face.
Gray glide the mists around our ocean's edges,
Gray grope the tides across the gray-paved sea,
Gray clings the foam about our granite ledges,
Naught, naught remains to safeguard you from
me.
These axe the souls who watch us at our dreaming,
Spirits of mist, of spray-dashed crag and sea ”

“ In London, at a distance from all this tragedy of courage, I felt that I had slipped back to a lower plane; a kind of flabbiness was creeping into my blood—the old selfish fear of life and love of comfort. It's odd that out here, where the fear of death should supplant the fear of life, one somehow rises into a contempt for everything which is not bravest. ”

“ The asphalt surface of the boulevard, polished by petrol and rubber-tires to the dull brightness of steel, glimmered in a long line before us reflecting the arc-lamps like a smooth waterway—like a slow canal in ancient Venice.
Where we went I do not know; I did not care to notice. The creaking fiacre had become a gondola and it was Fiesole who leant against me. Sometimes the cocher drew up to light a cigarette and to glance suspiciously down upon us. Then I was brought back to reality. We circled the Bastille and prowled through the Quartier Latin, where the night was not so late. ”

“ Years later Teddy looked back and questioned, was it love that the little boy felt that winter’s morning? He had experienced what the grown world calls real love by then, and yet he couldn’t see the difference, except that real love is more afraid, thinks more of itself and is more exacting. If love be a divine uplifting, a desirable madness, a mirage of fine deception which exists only in the lover’s brain, then he felt it that morning. ”

“ And God vouchsafe me one more summer's day
Of utter peace, perchance thy voice I'll hear
Trilling in confidence from some cool glade—
And thus my madman's prayer will be repaid.
Laughter breaks forth again; the world is glad.
There's music in the very rocks to-day.
Yea, through my sullen bars the red sun peers
And stains my confines with his golden smile;
God shakes His happiness abroad to-day.
See, I will rake this yellow harvest home
And treasure it against a sadder hour,
When Winter's mantled all our stars in night. ”

“ To be remembered years after you yourself have forgotten, to have men prying into the workings of a brain which has been dust in a shell for two centuries, is a very definite kind of immortality. To be forgotten—that is what we most dread. Never to have happened would not matter; but to have happened, to have walked the world, laughed, loved, created, and then to be treated as though we had not happened, there lies the sting of death. ”

“ The Fiesole I had seen was a wild, mad girl, provoking, charming, inconsiderate as a child and frolicsome as the mad spring weather—but rarely tender. I wondered what other secrets of kindness lay hidden in her personality. She was the sort of woman a man might live with for twenty years and still be discovering. She kept one restless by the very richness of her character. It was true what she had said: many men might love her; few would desire to marry her.
She rose from the lounge. Standing between me and the lamp, her long shadow fell across me. ”

“ Against the cold melancholy of the London sky, like silhouettes crayoned on a wall of ice, roofs and chimneys stood smudged. In flickering pin-points of incandescence street-lamps wakened; night came drifting like a ship into harbour under shrouded sails.
She had been sitting listening for a long time, haunted by childish fears that he would not come. At seven promptly a taxi panted into the square and drew up wheezing and coughing before the little house. Seizing her evening-wrap, she ran down the stairs and had her hand on the door before his knock had sounded. ”

“ Probably Hal had thought to do the same for Vashti, and Horace for Fluffy—all the men who had loved in vain had promised themselves to do just that; but they hadn’t loved with sufficient obstinacy—with sufficient courage.
He helped her into her wraps. They passed out into the gold and silver landscape. It was like entering into a new faith—like leaving deceit behind. Merriness was in the air. Birds fluttered out of hedges, making the snow glitter in their exit. From farms out of sight, roosters blew shrill challenges, like trumpeters riding through a Christmas faeryland. ”

“ Which unseen challengers, the winds, do chase,
Drowning their anger to a tranquil depth,
Till in blue sky-weed unrevenged they lie
Like gaunt Armada galleons long since sunk.
So all is calm again, and I look out
With prison'd eyes upon Thy travelling world.
A breath of flowers is in the air to-day,
Spring flowers which have not bloomed for many
months,
Which, for my sake, have come to life this day.
I cannot see them, they grow far from here
With feet entangled in the green, gray earth. ”

“ It must have sounded like the voice of conscience—the old and boasted sin for which medals were struck, the infamy of which was worn as a decoration, rising out of the past to exact suffering for suffering, panic for panic, blood for blood. Whoever chose that battle-cry was a poet—he said everything in the shortest and most rememberable way. America is in France to act as the revenge of God. She has suffered in the spirit what France has suffered in the flesh; through being in France she has learnt from the French the justice of passionate, punishing hate. ”

“ From cliffs came the shy, old-fashioned fragrance of wall-flowers nestling in crannies. Yellow furze ran like a flame through the bracken. Far out from shore waves leapt and flashed, clapping their hands in the maddening sunshine. My cheeks were damp and my lips were salt with in-blown spray. It was one of those mornings of exultation which come to us rarely and only in youth, when the joy of the flesh is roused within us, we know not why, and every nerve is set tingling with health—and the world, as seen through our eyes, clothes itself afresh to symbolize the gay abandon of our mood. ”

“ Scarcely daring to stir, Teddy turned his eyes away from Harriet, and stared into the darkness of the room. The air was tense with tragedy. In the flickering half-circle of firelight a man was crouched against the armchair—kneeling like a child with his head in the faery-godmother’s lap. He was sobbing. Teddy had heard his mother cry; this was different. There was shame in the man’s crying and the dry choking sound of a horrible effort to regain self-mastery. The faery-godmother bent above him. Teddy could see the glint of her spectacles. ”