May Sinclair

“ Oh, John, what's the good of lying? You forgot that I helped Alice Bartrum to pack Gurney's things. You forget that Billy knows."
"Do I? I shan't forget your going back on me; your betraying me," he said.
And for the first time she realised how alone he was; how horribly alone.
He had nobody but her.
"Who have I betrayed you to?"
"To Sutton. To McClane. To everybody you talked to."
"No. No."
"Yes. And you betrayed me in your thoughts. That's worse. People don't always mean what they say. It's what they think." ”

“ Gurney, McClane's best chauffeur. McClane and Sutton were at Melle.
They had not been to Berlaere since that day, the first time they had gone out together. That time at least had been perfect; it remained secure; nothing could ever spoil it; she could remember the delight of it, their strange communion of ecstasy, without doubt, without misgiving. You could never forget. It might have been better if you could, instead of knowing that it would exist in you forever, to torment you by its unlikeness to the days, the awful, incredible days that had come afterwards. ”

“ There was a stir as Charlotte went in; people shifting their places to make room for her; McClane calling out to her to come and sit by him; Alice Bartrum making sweet eyes; the men getting up and cutting bread and butter and reaching for her cup to give it her. She could see they were all determined to be nice, to show her what they thought of her; they had sent Trixie to bring her in. There was something a little deliberate about it and exaggerated. They were getting it up—a demonstration in her favour, a demonstration against John Conway. ”

“ So that, even in the sharp, waking day she felt his fear as a secret, mysterious thing. She couldn't account for it. She didn't, considering the circumstances, she didn't judge the imminence of the Germans to be a sufficient explanation. It was as incomprehensible to-day as it had been yesterday.
But there was fear and fear. There was the cruel, animal fear of the Belgians in the plantation, fear that was dark to itself and had no sadness in it; and there was John's fear that knew itself and was sad. The unbearable, inconsolable sadness of John's fear! ”

“ As she crossed the road a shell fell in the open field beyond, and burst, throwing up a great splash and spray of brown earth. She stiffened herself in an abrupt gesture of defiance. Her mind retorted: "You've missed, that time. You needn't think I'm going to put myself out for you." To show that she wasn't putting herself out (in case they should be looking) she strolled with dignity to her car, selected carefully the kind of splint she needed, and returned. She thought: Oh well—supposing they do hit. We must get those men out before another comes.
John looked up as she came to him. ”

“ And when the Flamand was laid out on McClane's table, while McClane dressed his wound, she slipped down the lane and opened the green door.
The man lay on a row of packing cases with his feet parted. She put one hand over his heart and the other on his forehead under the lock of bloodstained hair. He was dead: stiff dead and cold. His tunic and shirt had been unbuttoned to ease his last breathing. She had a queer baffled feeling of surprise and incompleteness, as if some awful sense in her would have been satisfied if she had seen that he had been living when John had said that he was dead. ”

“ John's window faced her where she sat; she could see his head passing and passing across the black window space. To her sharp, waiting soul Barrow Farm took on a sudden poignant and foreign beauty. The house was yellow where the rain had soaked it, gold yellow like a sun-struck southern house, under the black plume of the firs, a yellow that made the sky's blue solid and thick. The grass, bright green after the rain, stretched with the tight smoothness of velvet over the slopes and ridges of the field. ”

“ She saw herself and John carrying a stretcher, John at the head and her at the foot and Gwinnie and Dr. Sutton with another stretcher.
Nothing for her and John and Gwinnie but field work; the farm had spoiled them incurably for life indoors. But it had hardened their muscles and their nerves, it had fitted them for the things they would have to do. The things they would have to see. There would be blood; she knew there would be blood; but she didn't see it; she saw white, very white bandages, and greyish white, sallow-white faces that had no features that she knew. ”

“ Her features had a curious, sweet bluntness; her eyes were decorations, deep-set blue in the flushed gold of her sunburn. The little man straddled as he talked to them, bobbing forward now and then, with a queer jerking movement from his hips.
She wondered what they were and decided that they were part of the
Commission for Relief in Belgium, bound for Ostend.
All those people had the look that John had, of having found what they had wanted, of being satisfied, appeased. Even Sutton had it, lying on the top of his sadness, like a light. They felt precisely as she was feeling—all those people. ”

“ Gwinnie had turned her back, burrowing into her pillow with a final shrug of her hips. She was asleep now in her corner.
"If I were you I wouldn't think about him, Sharlie"—She knew what Gwinnie meant. But thinking was one thing and caring was another. Thinking was the antidote to caring. If she had let her mind play freely over Gibson Herbert in the beginning—But Gibson stopped her thinking, and John Conway made her think. ”

“ They heard the barking of machine guns from the battlefield at the top and the rattle of the bullets on the causeway. These sounds seemed to her to have no significance. As if they had existed only in some unique relation to John Conway, his death robbed them of vitality.
The door of the house opened a little way; they slipped into the long narrow room lighted by a few oil lamps at one end. At the other John's body lay on a stretcher set up on a trestle table, his feet turned outwards to the door, ready. ”

“ Perhaps he was afraid that John, in his khaki, would be mistaken for the commandant.
How childish he was with his fear and jealousy. Childish. She thought of his petulant refusal to let John come in with them. As if he could really keep him out. When it came to action they were one corps; they couldn't very well be divided, since McClane had more men than stretchers and John had more stretchers than men. They would all be infinitely happier, working together like that, instead of standing stupidly apart, glaring and hating. ”

“ She didn't like McClane. He straddled too much. But you couldn't go on ignoring him. His dreamy, innocent full face with its arching eyes was a mask, the mask of dangerous, inimical intentions; his profile was rough cut, brutal, energetic, you guessed the upper lip thin and hard under the hanging moustache; the lower one stuck out like a sucker. That was his real face. It showed an adhesive, exhausting will that squeezed and sucked till it had got what it wanted out of people. ”

“ Charlotte came out of the hot field into the cool room of the beech ring. She sniffed up the clean, sharp smell of sap from the rough seat that she and John had put up there, sawing and hacking and hammering all Sunday afternoon. Every evening when the farm work was done they would sit there together, inside the round screen of the beeches.
The farm people wouldn't disturb them; not even Mr. Burton, now, looking in, smiling the fat, benevolent smile that blessed them, and going away ”

“ She had a sense almost of relief.
"Charlotte—"
"John—"
"You asked me why I came here. You must have known why."
"I didn't. I don't."
"Can't you think?"
"No, John. I've left off thinking. My thinking's never any use."
"If you did think you'd know it was you."
"Me?"
"If it wasn't you just at first it was your face. There are faces that do things to you, that hurt you when they're not there. Faces of people you don't know in the least. You see them once and they never let you alone till you've seen them again. They draw you after them, back and back. ”

“ She could feel the jerk and throb in John's breathing, measuring off the moments of his silence. Her thoughts came and went. "When he says he cares for me I shall have to tell him"—"This is going on for ever. If he cared for me he would have said it before now."—"It doesn't matter. He can care or not as he likes. Nothing can stop my caring." ”

“ His voice was very quiet now, his excited gestures had ceased. "Try and think of it as something more real, more important and necessary than he was; or you and I. Something that is always struggling to be, to go on being. Something that degeneracy is always trying to keep under.... Power. A power in retreat, fighting to get back its lost ground."
Then what she had loved was not John Conway. ”

“ He isn't quite an ordinary coward."
"I'm not sure. I've known chaps like that. Can't keep away from the thing."
But she stuck to it. John's cowardice was not like other people's cowardice. Other cowards going into danger had the imagination of horror. He had nothing but the imagination of romantic delight. It was the reality that became too much for him. He was either too stupid, or too securely wrapped up in his dream to reckon with reality. It surprised him every time. And he had no imaginative fear of fear. His fear must have surprised him.
"He'll have got away from Bruges," she said. ”

“ John shouted out, "Hold on, McClane, there's another tram coming," and set off up the street. They had taken all the men out of the houses; therefore the man with the bad wound must have been left somewhere by the plantation. They went there, carrying their stretcher, going, going up to the last minute, in delight, in the undying thrill of the danger.
The wounded man was not in the plantation. As they looked for him the tram from Lokeren slid in, Red Cross men on the steps, clinging. The doors were flung open and the wounded men came out, stumbling, falling, pushing each other. ”

“ He laughed his mirthless, assenting laugh.
"You don't care about people at all. You only care about their diseases and their minds and things."
"I think I care a little about the wounded."
"You don't really. Not about them. You care about getting in more of them and quicker than any other field ambulance on the front. I can't think why you're bothering about me now."
"That's why. If I'm to get in more wounded I can't have anybody in my corps who isn't fit."
"I'm fit. What's the matter with me?"
"Not much. Your body's all right. And your mind was all right till
Conway upset it. ”

“ About romance and danger. It made her hot and shy. She supposed that was because she couldn't take things in. Her fatheadedness. It was easy not to say things if you didn't feel them. The more John felt them the more he had to say them. Besides, he never said them to anybody but her. It was really saying them to himself, a quiet, secret thinking.
He stood close, close in front of her, tall and strong and handsome in his tunic, knee breeches and puttees. She could feel the vibration of his intense, ardent life, of his excitement. ”

“ Round the corner of the balcony they could see into the Place below; it was filled with a thick black crowd of refugees. Antwerp was falling. Presently the ambulance train would come in and they would have to go over there to the station with their stretchers and carry out the wounded. Meanwhile they waited.
John brooded. His face was heavy and sombre with discontent. "No," he said. "No. It isn't good enough."
"What isn't?"
"What we're doing here. Going to all those little tin-pot places. The real fighting isn't down there. They ought to send us to Antwerp." ”

“ Oh, why are we so beastly hard on each other? Everybody's got their breaking-point. I don't lie about the things he lied about; I don't funk the things he funked. But when my time comes I daresay I shall funk and lie."
"Charlotte—are you sure you don't care for him?" ”

“ There are all sorts of jolly things we could do together.... Would you like to live with me, Charlotte, on my farm?"
"Yes."
"I mean—live with me without that."
"Yes; without that."
"It isn't that I don't care for you. It's because I care so awfully, so much more than anybody else could. I want to go on caring, and it's the only way. People don't know that. They don't know what they're destroying with their blind rushing together. ”

“ He could work things. So could Mrs. Rankin. She had dined with the Colonel.
Charlotte didn't care. She liked that beastliness, that hostility of theirs. It was something you could put your back against; it braced her to defiance. It brought her closer to John, to John and Gwinnie, and shut them in together more securely. Sutton she was not quite so sure about. Through all their depression he seemed to stand apart somehow by himself in a profounder discontent. "There are only four of us," he said; "we can't call ourselves a corps." ”