Part 10

Suddenly she was aware that Ronald was looking down on her. She yearned up to him, but as she did so she was conscious that her allegiance was divided. Not all of her, as heretofore, reached out to him undividedly his. There was a dumb insistent claim at her breast. She smiled to disguise it.

But it seemed that he understood. His face was troubled, the vivid eyes reproachful. He leaned over her.

"Dearest," he said. "I cannot share you. The child must never be more than the symbol of our love. You must be mine--always mine. Promise me that you will always be mine alone!"

His jealousy flattered her. A gush of affection for the strong lover admitting her power, mingled with the mother-craving for protection for self and child, was a fresh impulse revivifying the old allegiance:

"Always yours, dearest--always yours!"

He looked at her searchingly, his head seeming like a carven figure of destiny, strangely significant.

"I could annihilate the thing that comes between us," he said, and she was a little frightened at his voice. It rolled away big, superhuman--she harked back, in a flitting thought, to an earlier dream-memory.

He turned to a picture on the wall, pointed to it. It was the Alpine scene.

"You and I," he said. "Always together--alone upon the heights."

"Yes! Yes!" she said, only half understanding. "Always--always yours!"

She woke with a start, her own voice ringing in her ears. Night was still a blackness in the little cubicle. She put out her hand, touched the matchboard wall to assure herself of her surroundings.

When she woke again it was to look through the window and see the world white with snow. She remembered with some pleasure that she was off duty, had the day to herself. She wanted to be alone. Her head was a whirl of troubled thoughts. The emotions of her dream were still in her blood. Her arms felt vacant as though an infant had just been taken from them. A new longing came up in her--a craving for motherhood. She linked it to her dead lover. "Oh, Ronald!" she murmured. "If only we had been married before you went to the war----" she left the thought unfinished. The craving persisted, apart from his memory. She ached for a real, living affection in this world of men and women. Strange thoughts haunted her while she dressed.

As soon as possible she escaped from the hospital, went out upon the moor that stretched in suave contours of dazzling white. A pale blue sky sank into its mists. A cold wind hurried over it, whirling up little columns of dusty, frozen snow. She walked far into its solitudes, she hardly knew whether to escape from her thoughts or to be alone with them.

At last she turned back. She had climbed out of a little hollow, was descending a featureless slope when suddenly she perceived the figure of a man, dark against the snow. He walked towards her quickly. Simultaneous with her recognition of him was the flush of blood to her face, a peculiar nervous thrill. It was Captain Lavering. She half hesitated. Then she strode forward, an insidiously victorious temptation masquerading as strong will. Why should she not pass him? It was absurd. He might think----. She hoped that she was not blushing, or that the keen wind which fluttered her veil would be the self-evident excuse.

They met. He stopped, made a gesture of salute.

"Good morning, Captain Lavering." She was glad to hear her own voice, had been afraid that she could not bring it to utterance. What was there so troubling about this man? She avoided his eyes. "I'm pleased to see you walking about again." The crisis was successfully surmounted. She made as if to continue her way.

"I saw you in the distance, Sister," he said bluntly.

She did not find the commonplace remark for which she sought. He blocked her pathway.

"I have been waiting to speak to you for a long time, Sister," he continued, as though he knew there was no necessity for a trite beginning. "Ever since you saved my life. You did--we won't discuss that." She stared at him, speechless. "But I have waited until I was sure that I was quite well again. You know what I am going to say. For a long time you have felt what was in my mind. You must be my wife."

He was strong and real--vividly actual. She felt as she did sometimes when her eyes opened from a dream into the solid surroundings of her cubicle. He barred off the other world.

"No--no," she breathed, dodged past him, hurried over the snow.

He was by her side, keeping pace easily with her.

"You can't escape me like that," he said. There was obvious brute masculinity in his tone. Though she tried to resent it, it did not displease her, and she was angry with herself that it did not. "Listen. I am a plain man. There is no fancy romance about me. I don't want illusions. But I love you." He stated the fact with absolute decision. "I can offer you a good position and all that, but I know that does not affect the matter. The vital thing is that from the moment we set eyes on each other something happened----" for the first time he faltered in his tone. "We both knew it. There it is. I hate being sentimental. But I want you--and I know that you want me."

"No--no!" she said again, almost running. A blind desire to escape, from herself as much as from him, dominated her. "I--I can't."

"Can't? Why not? You are free. I know you were engaged. But he is--gone. We live in a world of flesh and blood. You can't exist on a memory. Besides," the words came like a slave-driver's whip--she almost obeyed it--"you never loved him as you love me!"

She revolted, stung to burning resentment against herself equally as against this masterful, crude male. She stopped and faced him.

"Captain Lavering, you talk like a sick man." She triumphed in the steadiness of her words. "You have insulted me in the most uncalled-for manner. Let that be enough."

His eyes looked into hers, challenged her sincerity, were assured of it. He went red, looked awkward.

"Forgive me," he mumbled.

She went on without a word, ignored the fact that he accompanied her. They breasted an upward smooth slope of snow that stretched up to a crisp, clear outline against the blue sky. He ventured a sidelong glance at her, a little light of primitive cunning in his eyes.

"Quite Alpine, isn't it?" he said.

As intended--his tone implied a resumption of ordinary commonplace relationship--the words took her off her guard. But he was ignorant of their esoteric significance. In a flash, in a deep convulsion of the soul, she saw the Alpine picture, vivid with symbolism, of her other life. "--On the heights!" In the full poignancy of the emotion it unlocked--her own vow of fidelity ringing in her ears from another world--she found herself struggling in a man's tight grasp, hot breath upon her face, lips seeking her own. "You must! You shall!" he muttered, straining forward to her. She stiffened, fought in a frenzy. "Ronald! Ronald!" she cried.

An icy wind swept down the slope, smote upon them like a breath from the grave, shudderingly cold. Captain Lavering uttered a little cry, relaxed his grip, and fell sideways upon the snow.

Sister Braithwaite stared at him in horror. A great fear came upon her, an awe in the presence of unearthly power. _She knew!_ Her soul slipped back into its dream-state, confronted the visage of her lover, stern as destiny. The eyes judged her, forgave. Then, weeping hysterically, she ran towards the hospital. It was not far distant.

They brought in the dead man.

"H'm," said the Medical Officer, looking at him. "Cerebral hæmorrhage. This intense cold---- I was always rather afraid of a lesion. A nasty shock for you, Sister. Well, well, another one finished--very sad, very sad."

An orderly brought Sister Braithwaite her share of the just arrived post. There was a letter from Ronald's mother. It enclosed one from the War Office.

"Dear Madam," it ran. "It is regretted that no further details have come to hand regarding your son. Officially he is still posted as 'missing, believed killed.'"

Sister Braithwaite shut herself in her cubicle, talked to the photograph with the vivid eyes, talked to it as primitive woman talks to the lover who has destroyed his rival. She reached out to the Other Side.

NA NOS!

(_A study of Serb infantry in battle, 1914_)

There is no moon. In black darkness a long file of men stumbles up a stony gully. Precipitous rock-walls keep them to the bed of a vanished stream, where they trip in succession over the same loose boulders. Their curses are hushed instantly by voices not less authoritative because they bark in whispers. Wrapped in long sheepskin coats the figures pass like ghosts of an antique time, whose grimness is accentuated by the incongruity of modern rifles with fixed bayonets that glint under the myriad stars. Presently the head of the file halts in what seems a black pit, the edge of which cuts sharply against the star-powdered bluish darkness of the sky. Those behind arrive continuously, collect in the hollow, are formed into ranks by sergeants who bully _sotto voce_ like angry conspirators. The company commander is crawling on hands and knees up the wall of the hollow, which is not so precipitous as it appears in the darkness.

The captain peers cautiously over the crest. He sees only blackness which rises all around him from an abyss that reflects no ray in its profundity, and blots out the stars high in the sky with irregular cones and shapeless masses of inky night. From those mountains a wind blows chilly on his face. He fixes his gaze upon a point in the blackness far across the gulf. The point is decided upon after careful reference to a phosphorescent compass in his hand. He stares at this blank darkness until it almost seems that he must be staring against closed lids.

Suddenly in the gloom at which he strains his eyes, he perceives a pin-point of light. It flickers for an instant and then projects itself in a ray of intense brilliance widening from the point of origin, right across the gulf. It falls in a great oval of blinding whiteness upon the hill-side to his right. Its hard white glare is painful in its brutality. Everything outside the ray is swallowed in a blackness where even the stars are lost. The white oval on the hill-side moves slowly. It brings into vivid relief a long line of loosely piled stones behind which lie, in many attitudes, the motionless bodies of men. Some, which have fallen across the heap of stones, throw grotesque shadows, intensely black. The white oval stays its slow progress, vignettes them from the night. In the centre of the picture one of these figures stirs, raises itself upon one elbow and rubs its eyes stupidly like a man wakened from sleep by the sudden glare.

Instantly a group of sharp reports, multiplied by rapidly reiterated echoes, breaks from the distant blackness. The figure sinks quickly, a dark hole visible in the ghastly whiteness of its face. The oval begins to move again, assuring the men who lurk far back in the night that this uncompleted shelter-trench is held only by the dead.

Suddenly the light is cut off. The stars reappear in a sky that seems strangely pallid. The mountain masses silhouette themselves more definitely than before against their tenebrous background, the outlines of the high summits, where some snow still lies, picked out in a grey that has just the faintest tinge of yellow. From the black gulf below eddies of mist boil up like steam from a mighty cauldron, veiling the shrinking stars. A wall of fog rolls along the hill-side, blots out the mountains and the sky.

The captain turns instantly and calls down an order in a carefully restrained voice. The company in the hollow springs up and over the crest with the agility of born mountaineers. They follow their captain at a quick pace into the bank of fog. Behind them is a murmur of voices. The other companies of the battalion are coming up, deploying rapidly into line when they reach the crest. The first company has halted for a moment to allow time for their arrival. Seconds are precious. At any moment the cloud may roll away, expose them to the glare of hostile searchlights and a storm of bullets. In two long lines the battalion moves briskly down the hill, leaving the unfinished shelter-trench upon its right. Behind, another battalion is coming up in support.

Some way down the slope the infantry breaks out of the mist. They open their files and slacken pace, dodging nimbly from one to another of the boulders which glimmer in the twilight. Overhead the searchlights move uneasily in long pale bands against the paling sky and fall upon the fog-belt in white circles as upon a magic-lantern screen. The infantry is not yet discovered. It works stealthily but quickly forward, aiming at a lower ridge that rises before them. They seem alone in the narrow mountain-valley that begins to reveal itself in the dawn, but their officers know that to right and left of them other battalions are likewise creeping forward. They reach the ridge, halt and lie down upon its slope, wisps and wreaths of mist blowing over them.

The searchlights are extinguished--when, it is hard to say. The sky is now a translucent ultramarine where no stars are left, and against which the mountain peaks stand out in vivid orange. White fog patches wander over the dark lower faces of the hills. The infantry creeps cautiously up to the summit of its ridge and, like one man, peeps over. In front of them is a mountain-wall that goes back at an angle, leaving a great gap. Another ridge, parallel to their own, starts from the mountain-side and drops away to the left. Its foot is lost in a sea of fog. Between them and that ridge the ground drops into a ravine and then mounts in a smooth _glacis_ to the further crest. A little below its summit the loose boulders, which are everywhere sown over the ground, are disposed in a long regular grey line. The officers of the battalion give the range to that line--750 yards. The infantrymen snuggle down behind boulders and inequalities on the crest and adjust their sights. There is a general loosening of sheepskin coats, a tinkle of cartridge-clips laid in readiness, and then the line lies still, waiting, its bayoneted rifles slid back out of view.

Far back the infantry brigade commander is lying upon his stomach upon the height to the left of the wrecked shelter-trench. The fog-belt has moved off. He has a clear view from ridge to ridge. Suddenly he takes his field-glasses from his eyes and picks up a telephone receiver at the end of a long line trailing over the ground. He speaks a few words into it, replies shortly to mysterious enquiries that emanate from the far distance, suggests a number of metres in thousands. Almost immediately the shriek of a shell passes overhead and the report of a cannon-shot comes echoing along the valley, arrives in a succession of distinct shocks to the ear. Ere the echoes have died away another shell screams past, followed by its series of reverberations. The infantry brigadier is watching the distant ridge through his binoculars. The line of boulders is faintly visible. The first shell bursts above it and beyond; the second bursts short. The bracket is too wide. The brigadier speaks again through the telephone. Another shell wakes weird noises from the mountains as an accompaniment to its own shriek. It bursts just in front of the line of boulders above it. Through his glasses the brigadier sees the splash of shrapnel bullets upon the rocks like twinkles in quick whiffs of dust. He speaks two brief words into the telephone. A flight of shells rushes overhead like a covey of screaming spirits and with an enormous roll of thunder arrives the roar of a battery in rapid action. Its reverberations roll and clash endlessly, surging from side to side of the valley in confused waves of violent sound. The long line of boulders is suddenly whelmed in a cloud of dust that renews itself as fast as it drifts into the air. From one end of that cloud spurt tiny points of flame, and shriek crosses shriek in the air above, whilst a series of sharp crashes mingles with the continuous roar. Quick puffs of white smoke appear in groups against the blue sky. In the unfinished shelter-trench spurts of dust leap up around the bodies of the dead men who lie behind the boulders. A battery of guns has been pushed up into the infantry line over there on the hostile ridge and, unobservant of the menace close at hand, is spending its fury upon the trench that it wrecked overnight.

The firing line upon the intervening ridge lies quiet in its concealment. Its officers have no wish to provoke a _rafale_ from a battery protected by tall stone sangars. Intently they watch the sheets of dust that spurt up high over the line of boulders like the beat of a rough sea against a breakwater. They mark where the long thin tongues of flame shoot out ceaselessly in reply, spitting at a distant target far behind them. They communicate these observations to the battalion commander who is smoking a cigarette in an attitude of ease a little way down the slope. A man close to him commences a series of quick, jerky gesticulations with a pair of flags held stiffly at arm's length. No flags wave in reply, but, far back, the brigadier at the telephone speaks. A great shell rushes overhead with the roar of an express train. A moment later the officers upon the ridge see a sudden eruption of flame and rocks in the centre of the line of boulders. They send another message down to the signaller. Another shell hurtles through the air, another explosion shoots upward, this time nearer to the spitting guns. Where the fumes drift off, great holes, in which there is a scurry of tiny figures, are visible in the shelter trench. Wide grins open on the faces of the Serbian firing-line as they draw their rifles close to them and finger the triggers. They understand fully the value of artillery support. Again and again the volcanic eruptions spout into the air with an appalling detonation that breaks heavily into the rolling echoes which fill the valley. Two of them leap up suddenly from the very midst of the dust-cloud where the battery is at work. There is a fountain of flying rocks dark in the centre of the flame, and in the colossal roar of the explosion a brief, acute note of human agony comes like a high-pitched discord mingled with a thunderous bass. A moment later the line of guns is revealed, naked to attack. A few men are seen darting with short movements about them. Three out of the six eject a tongue of flame at short intervals. While they fire, a pale gleam flickers along the Serbian ridge as the bayoneted rifles are thrust forward, and with a long dry crackle a sheet of bullets leaps out at the wrecked battery. The sun rises over a shoulder of the mountains and a band of golden light spreads downwards, illuminates the flying clouds of dust in which figures can just be seen frantically endeavouring to turn the guns in the new direction. They are picked off one by one with deadly aim. Above the trench the shrapnel bursts incessantly, a new shower starting ere its predecessor has reached earth.

Along the Serbian ridge the sheepskin-clad figures lie in snug safety and pull trigger with chuckles of satisfaction. There is no excitement, only a keen savouring of primeval emotions that can now be given rein. About them dance quick spurts of dust and bright splashes of nickel appear upon the rocks. An irregular rifle fire is coming from the hostile ridge. One or two shells burst overhead and then the guns fall silent, are forgotten. The company on the right starts suddenly to its feet, dashes over the crest and down the slope. The rifle fire from the other ridge changes in character, welcomes them with rapid, violent claps. A couple of machine-guns strike into the din with a continued rapid and resonant hammering, nerve-racking in its persistency. Men in the running line throw up their arms or pitch forward here and there, but the company is lost to sight almost immediately on the rock-strewn hill-side. The men dart forward from boulder to boulder. Behind them on their left other companies are descending in quick succession towards the ravine.

At the other side of the ridge, in rear, the second line of the battalion is coming up in support, and behind them the other battalions of the brigade are streaming forward, unhindered as yet by artillery fire. It is a brief respite, however. In a moment or two a distant, unseen battery has got their range, flings shell after shell to burst over their heads and fall in a spreading cone of bullets. The brigade advances with quick onward dashes by battalions that spring up, race a hundred yards and disappear for a breathing space among the boulders. Gradually they draw into the shelter of the intervening ridge, and battalion after battalion tops it and moves down to the aid of those in front. A strong firing-line remains on the crest, keeps up a steady stream of bullets against the long grey line still whelmed in dust by an unceasing hail of shrapnel. The brigadier ensconces himself in a rock shelter at the end of this firing-line, the telephone receiver still ready to his hand.

The first line of the attack has now reached the ravine. The men seize hold of tiny shrubs that grow out at overhanging angles and swing themselves down, scrambling over loose stones and sliding sand. A hail of bullets is beating upon them from the trench above and from a line of supports that has come into action higher still. The machine-guns hammer with an appalling energy that knows not fatigue. Where their aim is directed the sand spouts up as though struck by an air-blast from a hose. In that ravine the first line is more than decimated. Men stumble and fall upon their own bayonets. Corpses, hanging limply, weigh down the shrubs. With fierce shouts the survivors scramble onward. The second line has caught them up, is mingled with them. The battle-madness seethes in every head; each bullet that strikes harmlessly upon the earth is a shock of stimulation to already hyper-excited nerves. They lose their identity, lose the instinct of self-preservation in the flood of an older instinct which blinds them to all but the hazards of the ground, and sweeps them forward like demented animals frantic to assuage a thirst that consumes their tissues. A savage cry breaks automatically from every throat; the blood-congested brains, that permit the action of the muscles, unconscious of it. They reach the bottom of the ravine, not very deep, and clamber up in the comparative security of the other side.

At the foot of the smooth slope which reaches to the dust-whelmed boulder-line, their officers halt them by orders, entreaties. The men lie down and open a rapid, irregular fire against the trench. More men arrive behind them, frenzied with excitement. They attempt to rush upward, are pulled back by officers, or are struck down quickly in the rain of bullets from the trench. The rifle-fire up there comes now in one long rolling crackle through the cloud of dust that flurries in answer to the continuous crashing of the shrapnel. The fire of the attack increases in sporadic bursts.

On the ridge behind, the brigadier speaks a few brief words into the telephone. A minute later the shrapnel ceases to burst over the trench.