Part 9

The words branded themselves into her brain as she sat there fixed, immobile. She could hear them in the wailing cry of the widowed mother who had written the telegram, but her own voice seemed to her for ever dumb, never to break this crushing silence. She stared--with dry eyes--straight before her. The obsequial lights of the departed sun, framed by the window opposite, were extinguished one after another. She did not stir, was unconscious that her hand was still in the grasp of the wounded man. "_The War Office reports_----" It was like staring at a high, closed door.

An immeasurable time passed before an orderly entered, switched on the electric light, drew the blinds. She roused herself, found the grip upon her hand relaxed. She rose--with tight lips and burning eyes, went about her duties.

That evening it was by an effort of will, sternly administered, that she sat at table in the Sisters' messroom. She scarcely ate, was deaf to the feminine chatter around her. One of the sisters, a notorious flirt, joked her upon her loverlike posture with Number Ten. The orderly had evidently talked. Sister Braithwaite did not reply. As soon as possible she fled to her little matchboarded cubicle.

By her bedside was a photograph of a clean-featured young man, with intellectual eyes, more than ordinarily vivid in their expression. She kissed it passionately--"Ronald! Ronald!"--the loved name came from the depths of her. The merciful tears fell fast, her bosom heaved.

She slept with a packet of letters pressed tight against her warm body.

* * * * *

She heard her name called: "Mary! Mary!" in a startlingly familiar voice. She heard herself reply: "Ronald!" It was very dark. Where was she? Ah, by the stream. It seemed queerly natural that she should be by that stream. It was not so dark after all--only twilight. Twilight with dark woods coming down to the stream. Her name was called again: "Mary! Mary!" her lover's voice impatient. Again she heard herself reply: "Ronald! Where are you?" "Here, dear! On the other side! You must cross the stream."

Of course! She must cross the stream--that was quite natural--and there was a little footbridge, offering passage. She went over, not daring to look down. On the other side she waited. He was not yet visible. She wondered what suit he would be wearing, wondered why she wondered. He came towards her, his clothes curiously more conspicuous than his face. He was clad in his old tweed suit, and mysteriously it seemed odd to her. Yet what else should he be wearing? It was the suit he always wore when out for a walk. She glanced at her own clothes with a subtle sense of strangeness, yet it was her old summer frock she wore. This little puzzle about clothes played itself out in cosmic depths of her, receded or was solved, vanished. Her lover was standing at her side, enfolded her.

"Mary! I have been so anxious about you!"

She looked up to eyes that seemed like stars in the twilight.

"I, too, Ronald--I have been worrying about you." There was a sense of something terrible in the background, imminent, and yet she felt it had been with her for a long time. It ceased. "But everything's all right now--I have found you."

A little glimmering something in the depths of her asked why she said that, seemed to repeat doubtfully: "Found you----" in a long, eternally re-echoing voice. She felt eerie. It was as though her existence was a duplicate imperfectly combined, like the double vision, half running into each other, of badly adjusted binoculars.

"I am so glad you are safe, dear," she heard herself say.

"Let us go and hear the nightingales," he said in the voice so ringingly his own. He drew her along the path in the twilight, his arm about her waist.

Nightingales? Now? Of course, why not? The season was early June--what was the silly half-thought submerged beyond the horizon of her mind?

She allowed herself to be impelled by the pressure of his arm. Closely linked, they followed the tenebrous path by the wood, climbed skirting its dark edge. Her lover talked copiously and interestingly as he always did--on a multitude of subjects. He was humorous, satirical, rhapsodic, earnestly eloquent by turns. How like him it was! She admired the wide range of his mind. Much more easily than usual--she realised it in a little glow of self-flattery--she comprehended him all through a long and intricate disquisition. Yet lurking somewhere in her dream-consciousness was the feeling that there was an all-important topic on which he did not touch. A part of her tried to identify that topic and failed. The failure worried her. He talked of travel, of a trip into Germany through the Black Forest, across Lake Constance into Austria and the Tyrol. Of course! That was to be their honeymoon tour. In the days before--before what?--before something--they had often talked about it. They were not even officially engaged then--she remembered how they used to laugh together over these distant projects that were treated as imminent facts. They had even had a little quarrel over the choice of two alternative stopping places. She came back to his voice.

"Listen!" he said. "Listen!"

A nightingale was singing with supernatural power. Loud, thrillingly resonant under the stars that now powdered the sky, the song welled out to them. Its burden, mysteriously comprehended by them to esoteric depths, was sorrow--the sorrow of all the world, here completely expressed, transmuted into so strange a beauty that the listener held his breath. The deep sobs, shudderingly repeated, that threw off the magic runs of crystal sound, pervaded the atmosphere about them with a mystic spell, evoked an immense pity in them. They could have wept. Suddenly they were conscious of a perfidy in this magically induced compassion--a danger, common to both, implied in it, imminent. He flung his arms about her to protect her, shielding her from it.

"You are mine, dearest!--mine!--only mine!"

His words went ringing through the stars, passed out of hearing, but were not silenced. She felt kisses of intense fervour upon her mouth--responded.

"I am!" she cried. Her words also rolled away endlessly, as though permuted into imperishable brass. "I am yours alone!"

She half-woke in the feeling of a near presence, then sank again into a sleep that remembers not its dreams.

* * * * *

She awoke in the morning obsessed by the baffling sense of an occurrence she could not recall. Then the memory, the realisation of her loss flooded in on her--harshly predominant in those first empty moments as yet unlinked to the distractions of the day. She wept, uncontrollable tears. "Ronald! Ronald!" she cried in a low voice, her face buried in the soft pillow. Then she remembered. Her tears were checked. The details of her dream opened one by one, stirred in her a curious, subtle fear she felt unworthy of her. The vividness of it woke an atavistic emotion, the shrinking reaction of primitive humanity from the influence of those dead to this world. Yet a more recent growth in her tried to glory in the contact--impelled by an obscure sentiment of duty. "I do love you, Ronald!" she murmured again to the pillow. "I am yours alone!" The saying of the words seemed to merge her dream-life into unison with the actual.

There was much to do in the long, freshly-aerated ward that morning. As one by one each bed had its sheets turned back, exposing the gashed, perforated or fractured bodies of men who winced with pain, the crude other side of war was laid bare. Into strong relief, too, was thrown the complementary phase of the other side of the vast catastrophe where the noblest are proudly conscious of the wounds they inflict. With tender care, the utmost solicitude not to cause one unnecessary pang of suffering, the khaki-clad doctors, the grey-uniformed, white-coifed and aproned nurses, laboured to save and heal.

Sister Braithwaite thrust herself utterly into her daily task of dressing wounds, of soothing pain, of bringing a cheerful smile on to the face of the sufferer.

So doing, she eluded for quite long periods the obsession which haunted her.

Number Ten was once more the focus of interest in the ward. His condition had grown worse during the night. To-day he was in a dangerous fever. The doctor was grave. Sister Braithwaite watched over him with unremitting care, found herself passionately fighting off death. In the early afternoon the crisis passed. He woke from a quiet sleep, looked up to the Sister standing by his bed.

"You have saved me, Sister," he said in a weak voice. "I could feel it----"

"Hush, Captain Lavering. Go to sleep. We are all trying to get you well."

"It was you," he said faintly, as his eyes closed once more.

The silence of the ward was suddenly broken by a merry peal of bells floating in through the open windows. In the little village church tucked away in a near-by hollow of the moor a wedding was being solemnised. Sudden tears, a strange emotion, surged up in Sister Braithwaite.

A case that had made good progress was removed from the ward, a newly-arrived, severely-wounded man brought in.

"If only it were Ronald!" The neat, prim figure of the Sister, supervising the orderlies busy lifting the casualty into the bed, gave no indication of the desperate agonised prayer.

* * * * *

She dreamed.

"----Mine at last, my beloved--really mine!" The familiar voice thrilled through her, very close, overhead.

"Yours! Always yours!" she heard herself murmur.

She took her head from the darkness that obscured her vision--it was his coat against which she had been nestling; she saw the little white touzled-up hairs of the rough tweed ere her gaze stretched to longer focus. She looked to his face, met his vivid eyes--looked round at her surroundings.

They were alone in the first-class compartment of a railway train that rocked and roared. His lips were pressed on hers. "The great day, dearest!" he said. Her mind leaped to the allusion. Their wedding-day! They had been married that morning--she could hear still the joyous peal of bells--were going away on their honeymoon. The tweed suit he wore was quite new--something like the old. She was in a travelling-dress that he had already admired. Of course! It all came back to her as if she had just awakened from a little sleep.

The train rushed on. She lived through all the cinematograph-like pictures of the journey. A halt and descent--little anxieties about the luggage--then--after an interlude which was vague--another train, another long journey--all was a continuous long experience. She thrilled at a surreptitious squeeze of his hand--ah, yes, there were other people in the carriage now--rounded her lips at him in a provoking similitude of a kiss, daringly profiting by the inattention of their fellow-travellers. A yearning for him--induced by the naughty little act--filled her breast, persisted. There was bustle, confusion. They were in a throng of travellers who hurried. Hurry! They must not lose the boat. It lay there before them, only its upper works seen, its two great funnels leaning backward, belching black smoke. The black smoke spread over the sky. It was night. They were on board the boat, cradled in an easy motion, sensible of the throb of the engines. On and on they journeyed, linked in a very close communion of eyes that spoke, of hands that squeezed each other. She tasted a thousand little kindnesses. How good he was! How loving!

And still the journey went on. Yet more trains. She must have slept. She woke to a great city, filled with innumerable inhabitants, all very busy. They spoke a strange language very rapidly to one another. She could not understand a word. But he, Ronald, understood--conversed with them in their foreign tongue. How clever he was! There was music somewhere--from a lighted café that flooded a damp street with radiance.

She was bewildered in a variety of new and strange impressions, leaned on him, soul and body. He led her, sure of himself. Her love for him seemed to increase at this revelation of his unfailing self-reliance. Yet she knew that she loved him with all her being, had always loved him so.

"And how do you like Brussels, dearest?" his ringing voice asked. Brussels? Of course! As though a veil had fallen from her eyes she saw that they were in the middle of the Grand' Place, lights playing, Rembrandtesque, on the carved stonework of the ancient buildings. She recognised it at once--how accurate the picture postcards had been! Brussels--the honeymoon journey! She thrilled with happiness, leaning on his strong arm.

The dream continued----.

* * * * *

All through the next day its vividness haunted her. At times she had to will herself to live in the actual world. She scarcely spoke. The Medical Officer in charge of her ward stopped her, asked her if she were all right, his eyes searching her face. He sympathised with her in her loss so kindly and gently that she loved him for it.

Number Ten was still the great preoccupation. He claimed incessant care. But he was in the faint beginnings of good progress. Strangely, it seemed that when she tended him there was a conflict in some obscure part of her. There seemed to be an inarticulate voice, immensely remote, vaguely minatory, not explicit. Captain Lavering insisted that she was his rescuer, his eyes more eloquent than his words. It made her feel awkward, curiously shame-faced. His reiteration threw her out of that smile-armoured impersonal professional relation to the patient which alone makes continuous hospital work possible. She masked her face with a gentle severity. When he slept she was unreasonably glad. But she liked tending him. The contact with actual life, pain-stricken though it was, obliterated to some extent the haunting memory of that dream world from which she shrank, vaguely frightened.

She forced herself to live only in the long, quiet, bright ward; in the chattering society of the Sisters' messroom when off duty.

* * * * *

Her dream linked itself onto its predecessor. The honeymoon was finished. She looked back down a long vista of travel, of happy days. She had really lived through all those experiences. She picked them one by one from her memory like rare pieces from a jewel-case, contemplated them with a smile. Each expanded into a picture. The day they had walked together down the rugged path of the tiny valley imprisoned in the wooded hills, a fierce little stream outpacing them as it dashed against great boulders, and had come upon a sunny meadow where children garlanded with flowers laughed and danced in a ring; a wonderful blue lake on whose shores were yellow houses with red roofs and ancient cypresses on a greensward near the water's edge--the melancholy reiterated note of a church bell beat like a pulse through the scene; an old, old town with gabled houses leaning in close confidence, rich carvings--the grotesque; in all was a pervading peace, rich quiet life that thrives sleepy with well-being from year to year; over all was the ecstasy of mutual love through which they had beheld the world.

Another memory came to her--early morning in the Alps, a sea of wild narcissi all about them and, beyond, the great white peaks glittering in the sun of a blue sky. They went on and on, up and up. The flowers were left behind--and she remembered she had regretted leaving them, had grudged the effort to climb for the sake of climbing--but he had insisted. They stood at last high up, dazzlingly white snowfields stretching away on every side, a summer sun beating hot upon them. The air was rarefied, induced in them a subtle ecstasy as they stood marvelling at the brilliant austere beauty of the great peaks lifting themselves into the sky, their robes slipping from their rocky shoulders in a miracle of purity. He encircled her waist with his arm, spoke in the voice that stirred mysterious depths in her.

"Dearest," he said. "Not a flower but snow is the true emblem of love. White as the essential soul, how soon on the lower levels it is defiled, disappears! But on the heights it endures stainless for ever, no matter how hot the kiss of the sun."

And she had kissed him, speechlessly.

But all this was past. She was at home now, waiting for him to come back from his work. Their home, the home they had always planned, was all around her. The very pieces of furniture they had regarded in shop windows with longing eyes, had calculated the cost of, were there. That quaint old table in the centre of the room, half covered with the embroidered openwork white linen laid for tea--how covetously they had once looked on it! How depressed they had been at the dealer's price! But it was there, after all. Ronald had bought it, he who never rested until he attained his heart's desire. How purposeful he was! How strong! How loving-kind! She closed her eyes, leaned back in a swimming ecstasy of love.

There he was! She heard his footstep at the other side of the door. He entered, was radiant, enfolded her in that wonderful embrace where she was a surrendered thing. He had a little parcel, handed it to her. Tremblingly she opened it, certain of delight. It was a framed enlargement of a photograph they had taken that morning in the high Alps. With a little happy cry she gazed once more on the long smooth slopes of snow, stretching up to the dark-patched peaks. Once more his arm encircled her, his deep voice spoke.

"So shall we live, darling, always--ever upon the heights."

* * * * *

She lay awake in her bed, ere it was day, and understood in a great tremulous awe. In her dreams she and Ronald were living precisely the life they would have lived had there been no war. The honeymoon--their home--all would have been accomplished ere this. Had there been no war! Exactly as she had dreamed they would have travelled together--his arm would have enfolded her--in long, long happiness they would have lived. She burst into a passion of tears, stifled in the pillow. Then she turned her head, wondering, feeling as if her heart had stopped. Would this dream continue? Was it--in some mysterious way--_real_? Her lips moved in a prayer, but she scarcely knew what she prayed.

She was glad to escape into the busy actual life of the ward, into the light of day.

From now onwards her life definitely assumed this double phase.

In the hospital she was the Sister Braithwaite that all had known, diligent, bravely smiling, conscientious in her duty. Those about her remarked only that there was sometimes a curious stillness in her mien, spoke pityingly among themselves of the sad loss of her soldier lover. But death in a hospital is no rare catastrophe and none lingered on the topic. There was much to do, a continual stream of new arrivals from the distant conflict, the doubtful fate of many of those already long suffering. There were deaths, recoveries, operations of professional interest.

Number Ten went slowly but steadily towards health. Sister Braithwaite deliberately avoided all contact with him save the professional. When she chatted with a patient in the ward it was not with him. His gaze was reproachful, and she would not see it. Sometimes when she approached him he would, half-jokingly, reiterate that she had saved him. She would not hear. A strange sense of insecurity disturbed her in his presence. She half divined that he nursed a project----. She fled the glance of the steady, resolute eyes in the strong face. When at last he had made such progress that he could be removed to a convalescent ward she was glad at his departure.

At night she passed into another world. There was no war in that life--never had been war. From dream to dream she lived through a continuous existence--the wife of Ronald. It was all vividly real. It was the life they would have led--it played itself out now in what to her daytime consciousness was a realm of shadows. Not always did she dream, or rather not always did her consciousness register the events through which she passed. But later dreams had dream-memories in them and the record had no gaps. Time passed in that dream-world without relation to the terrestrial days. In one night she frequently lived through long periods. He was always kind to her, always loving. She, too, loved him passionately, with all her soul.

But in the daytime her being shrank from that shadow-life. She was afraid--mysteriously, primitively afraid. She could not mourn as she would have liked to mourn. Sometimes she asked herself whether she was not ceasing to love her dead affianced. She tried to evoke his image--and often, to her distress, succeeded not. The strongly masculine features of Number Ten, Captain Lavering, rose before her mental vision, would not be banished. Then she despised herself bitterly. In remorse she willed herself forward to the night, bade herself not shrink, and when the hour came gave herself to the darkness tremulously, like a slave of the harem who goes into the chamber of her lord. The portal passed she was happy, completely happy--as happy as she would have been the wife of Ronald in the dainty little home that never could be other than the home of her dreams. With strange, almost terrifying, completeness the shadow-life evolved. The house she lived in she knew in all its details, had its rooms that she preferred, views from its windows that she loved or veiled. The presence of her husband was a reality that filled it. She knew his footsteps, heard his voice. (It rang often in her ears when her eyes unclosed in the little matchboarded cubicle suddenly unfamiliar.) They had long, long conversations together--wonderful little interludes where their always underlying love blossomed into delicate flower. She saw his face clearly, saw that it was changing slightly, growing more set, less boyish. There were difficulties--the difficulties of real life--to be encountered. An anguished struggle with bills and finances that would not meet wrung her soul all one night. She pledged herself to such brave economies! But the difficulties were overcome, the memory of them lost in the embrace of her lover. Rarely, rarely was she unhappy until she woke.

And day by day, not keeping pace with her other life, her life of work in the hospital went on. Week linked into week, month into month. The great open moors around her changed their hue, were often shrouded in mist. In December the first frosts glassed the pools. Many were the patients who had come and gone. The little cemetery under the hill was fuller. Other sufferers were more fortunate. Captain Lavering was fully convalescent, nearing his discharge. She saw him often at a distance, avoided him when he tried to approach her. She could not have explained why, even to herself. Somewhere deep down in her, the virility of his aspect set a chord vibrating. She was always extremely, almost painfully, conscious of his propinquity. For many weeks they had not exchanged a word.

There came a night wonderful above all others. She thrilled with a strange new ecstasy, drawn from deep springs. It was the quiet, speechless ecstasy of some mysterious fulfilment. She was filled with a great tenderness that welled up and overflowed like a source. There was something warm against her heart. She looked down and saw that it was a newborn babe. She was in bed. Then, in a great surge of deeply flowing joy, she understood. She was a mother--the mother of Ronald's child! She could have cried for joy that lacked expression. Her fingers stroked thin silky hair on a tiny head.