The Romantic

by May Sinclair

XII

She woke very early in the morning with one clear image in her mind: what
John had done yesterday.

Her mind seemed to have watched all night behind her sleep to attack her with it in the first moment of waking. She had got to come to a clear decision about that. If Billy Sutton had done it, or one of McClane's chauffeurs, her decision would have been very clear. She would have said he was a filthy coward and dismissed him from her mind. But John couldn't be dismissed. His funk wasn't like other people's funk. Coupled with his ecstatic love of danger it had an unreal, fantastic quality. Somehow she couldn't regard his love of danger as an unreal, fantastic thing. It had come too near her; it had moved her too profoundly and too long; she had shared it as she might have shared his passion.

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! After all, you could think of him as a gentle thing, caught unaware in a trap and tortured. And who was she to judge him? She in her "armour" and he in his coat of nerves. His knowledge and his memory of his fear would be like a raw open wound in his mind; and her knowledge of it would be a perpetual irritant, rubbing against it and keeping up the sore. Last night she hadn't done anything to heal him; she had only hurt…. And if she gave John up his wound would never heal. She owed a sort of duty to the wound.

Of course, like John, she would go on remembering what had happened yesterday. She would never get over it any more than he would. Yet, after all, yesterday was only one day out of his life. There might never be another like it. And to set against yesterday there was their first day at Berlaere and the day afterwards at Melle; there was yesterday morning and there was that other day at Melle. She had no business to suppose that he had done then what he did yesterday. They had settled that once for all at the time, when he said Billy Sutton had told him she was going back with him. It all hung on that. If that was right, the rest was right….

Supposing Billy hadn't told him anything of the sort, though? She would never know that. She couldn't say to Billy: "Did you tell John I was going back with you? Because; if you didn't—" She would have to leave that as it was, not quite certain…. And she couldn't be quite certain whether the boy had been dead or alive. And … No. She couldn't get over it, John's cowardice. It had destroyed the unique, beautiful happiness she had had with him.

For it was no use saying that courage, physical courage, didn't count. She could remember a long conversation she had had with George Corfield, the man who wanted to marry her, about that. He had said courage was the least thing you could have. That only meant that, whatever else you hadn't, you must have that. It was a sort of trust. You were trusted not to betray defenceless things. A coward was a person who betrayed defenceless things. George had said that the world's adoration of courage was the world's cowardice, its fear of betrayal. That was a question for cowards to settle among themselves. The obligation not to betray defenceless things remained. It was so simple and obvious that people took it for granted; they didn't talk about it. They didn't talk about it because it was so deep and sacred, like honour and like love; so that, when John had talked about it she had always felt that he was her lover, saying the things that other men might not say, things he couldn't have said to any other woman.

It was inconceivable that he—It couldn't have happened. As he had said of the defeat of Belgium, it was so bad that it couldn't happen. Odd, that the other day she had accepted at once a thing she didn't know for certain, while now she fought fiercely against a thing she knew; and always the memory of it, returning, beat her down.

She had to make up her mind on what terms she would live with it and whether she would live with it at all. Supposing it happened again? Supposing you had always to go in fear of its happening?… It mightn't happen. Funk might be a thing that attacked you like an illness, or like drink, in fits, with long, calm intervals between. She wondered what it would feel like to be subject to attacks. Perhaps you would recover; you would be on the look-out, and when you felt another fit coming on you could stave it off or fight it down. And the first time wouldn't count because you had had no warning. It wouldn't be fair to give him up because of the first time.

He would have given her up, he would have left her to the Germans—Yes; but if she broke with him now she would never get beyond that thought, she would never get beyond yesterday; she would always see it, the flagged road swinging with the swinging bulge of the stretcher, the sudden stopping, the Flamand with his wound, the shafts of the stretcher, suddenly naked, sticking out; and then all the fantastic, incredible movements of John's flight. Her mind would separate from him on that, closing everything down, making his act eternal.

And, after all, the Germans hadn't come round the corner. Perhaps he wouldn't have left her if they had really come. How did she know what he wouldn't have done?

No. That was thin. Thin. She couldn't take herself in quite in that way. It was the way she had tried with Gibson Herbert. When he did anything she loathed she used to pretend he hadn't done it. But with John, if she didn't give him up, her eyes must always be open. Perhaps they would get beyond yesterday. Perhaps she would see other things, go on with him to something new, forgetting. Her unique, beautiful happiness was smashed. Still, there might be some other happiness, beautiful, though not with the same beauty.

If John had got the better of his fear—She thought of all the men she had ever heard of who had done that, coming out in the end heroic, triumphant.

* * * * *

Three things, three little things that happened that morning, that showed the way his mind was working. Things that she couldn't get over, that she would never forget.

John standing on the hospital steps, watching Trixie Rankin and Alice Bartrum as they started with the ambulances; the fierce fling of his body, turning away.

His voice saying, "I loathe those women. There's Alice Bartrum—I saw her making eyes at Sutton over a spouting artery. As for Mrs. Rankin they ought to intern her. She oughtn't to be allowed within ten miles of any army. That's one thing I like about McClane. He can't stand that sort of thing any more than I can."

"How about Gwinnie and me?"

"Gwinnie hangs her beastly legs about all over the place. So do you."

John standing at the foot of the stairs, looking at the Antwerp men. Their heads and faces were covered with a white mask of cotton wool like a diver's helmet, three small holes in each white mask for mouth and eyes. They were the men whose faces had been burned by fire at Antwerp.

"Come away," she said. But he still stood, fascinated, hypnotised by the white masks.

"If I were to stick there, doing nothing, looking at the wounded, I should go off my head."

"My God! So should I. Those everlasting wounds. They make you dream about them. Disgusting dreams. I never really see the wound, but I'm just going to see it. I know it's going to be more horrible than any wound I've ever seen. And then I wake…. That's why I don't look at them more than I can help."

"You're looking at them now," she said.

"Oh, them. That's nothing. Cotton wool."

And she, putting her hand on his arm to draw him up the stairs, away. John shaking her hands off and his queer voice rising. "I wish you wouldn't do that, Charlotte. You know I hate it."

He had never said anything to her like that before. It hadn't struck her before that, changed to himself, he would change to her. He hadn't got over last night. She had hurt him; her knowledge of his cowardice hurt him; and this was how he showed his pain.

She thought: Here's Antwerp falling and Belgium beaten. And all those wounded. And the dead…. And here am I, bothering about these little things, as if they mattered. Three little things.

* * * * *

The fire from the battlefield had raked the village street as they came in; but it had ceased now. The curé had been through it all, going up and down, helping with the stretchers. John was down there in the wine-shop, where the soldiers were, looking for more wounded.

They had found five in the stable yard, waiting to be taken away; they had moved four of them into the ambulance. The fifth, shot through the back of his head, still lay on the ground on a stretcher that dripped blood. Charlotte stood beside him.

The curé came to her there. He was slender and lean in his black cassock. He had a Red Cross brassard on his sleeve, and in one hand he carried his missal and in the other the Host and the holy oils in a little bag of purple silk. He looked down at the stretcher and he looked at Charlotte, smiling faintly.

"Where is Monsieur?" he said.

"In the wine-shop, looking for wounded."

She thought: He isn't looking, for them. He's skulking there, out of the firing. He'll always be like that.

It had begun again. The bullets whistled in the air and rapped on the stone causeway, and ceased. The curé glanced down the street towards the place they had come from and smiled again.

She liked his lean dark face and the long lines that came in it when it smiled. It despised the firing, it despised death, it despised everything that could be done to him there. And it was utterly compassionate.

"Then," he said, "it is for you and me to carry him, Mademoiselle." He stooped to the stretcher.

Between them they lifted him very slowly and gently into the ambulance.

"There, Monsieur, at the bottom."

At the bottom because of the steady drip, drip, that no bandaging could staunch. He lay straight and stiff, utterly unconcerned, and his feet in their enormous boots, slightly parted, stuck out beyond the stretcher. The four others sat in a row down one side of the car and stared at him.

The curé climbed in after him, carrying the Host. He knelt there, where the blood from the smashed head oozed through the bandages and through the canvas of the stretchers to the floor and to the skirts of his cassock.

The Last Sacrament. Charlotte waited till it was over, standing stolidly by the tail of the car. She could have cried then because of the sheer beauty of the curé's act, even while she wondered whether perhaps the wafer on his tongue might not choke the dying man.

The curé hovered on the edge of the car, stooping with a certain awkwardness; she took from him his missal and his purple bag as he gathered his cassock about him and came down.

"Can I do anything, Monsieur?"

"No, Mademoiselle. It is done."

His eyes smiled at her; but his lips were quivering as he took again his missal and his purple bag. She watched him going on slowly down the street till he turned into the wine-shop. She wondered: Had he seen? Did he know why John was there? In another minute John came out, hurrying to the car.

He glanced down at the blood stains by the back step; then he looked in; and when he saw the man lying on the stretcher he turned on her in fury.

"What are you thinking of? I told you you weren't to take him."

"I had to. I couldn't leave him there. I thought—"

"You've no business to think."

"Well, but the curé—"

"The curé doesn't know anything about it."

"I don't care. If he's in a clean bed—if they take his boots off—"

"I told you they can't spare clean beds for corpses. He'll be dead before you can get him there."

"Not if we're quick."

"Nonsense. We must get him out of that."

He seized the handle of the stretcher and began pulling; she hung on to his arm and stopped that.

"No. No," she said. "You shan't touch him."

He flung her arm off and turned. "You fool," he said. "You fool."

She looked at him steadily, a long look that remembered, that made him remember.

"There isn't time," she said. "They'll begin firing in another minute."

"Damn you." But he had turned, slinking round the corner of the hood to the engine. While he cranked it up she thought of the kit that one of the men had left there in the yard. She made a dash and fetched it, and as she threw it on the floor the car started. She snatched at the rope and swung herself up on to the step. The dying man lay behind her, straight and stiff; his feet in their heavy boots stuck out close under her hand.

The four men nodded and grinned at her. They protected her. They understood.

If only she could get him into a clean bed. If only she had had time to take his boots off. It would be all right if only she could bring him in alive.

He was still alive when they got into Ghent.

She had forgotten John and it was not until they came to take out the stretcher that she was again aware of him. They had drawn up before the steps of the hospital; he had got down and was leaning sideways, staring under the stretcher.

"What is it?"

"You can see what it is. Blood."

From the hole in the man's head, through the soaked bandages, it still dripped, dripped with a light sound; it had made a glairy pool on the floor of the ambulance.

"Don't look at it," she said. "It'll make you sick. You know you can't stand it."

"Oh. I can't stand it, can't I?"

He straightened himself. He threw back his head; his upper lip lifted, stretched tight and thin above the clean white teeth. His eyes looked down at her, narrowed, bright slits under dropped lids.

"John—I want to get him in before he dies."

"All right. Get in under there. Take his head."

"Hadn't I better take his feet?"

"You'd better take what you're told to."

She stiffened to the weight, heaved up her shoulder. Two men came running down the steps to help her as John pulled.

"They'll be glad," he said, "to see him."

* * * * *

She was in the yard of the hospital, swabbing out the car, when John came to her.

The back and side of the hospital, the long barracks of the annex and the wall at the bottom enclosed a waste place of ochreish clay. A long wooden shed, straw-white and new, was built out under the red brick of the annex. She thought it was a garage. John came out of the door of the shed. He beckoned to her as he came.

"Come here," he said. "I want to show you something."

They went close together, John gripping her arm, in the old way, to steer her. As they came to the long wall of the shed his eyes slewed round and looked at her out of their corners. She had seen that sidelong, attentive look once before, when she was a little girl, in the eyes of a schoolboy who had taken her away and told her something horrid. The door of the shed stood ajar. John half led, half pushed her in.

"Look there—" he said.

The dead men were laid out in a row, on their backs; greyish-white, sallow-white faces upturned; bodies straight and stiff on a thin litter of straw. Pale grey light hovered, filtered through dust.

It came from some clearer place of glass beyond that might have been a carpenter's shop, partitioned off. She couldn't see what was going on there. She didn't see anything but the dead bodies, the dead faces, and John's living face.

He leaned against the wall; his head was thrown back, his eyes moved glistening under the calm lids; the corners of his mouth and the wings of his nostrils were lifted as he laughed: a soft, thin laugh breathed out between the edges of his teeth. He pointed.

"There's your man. Shows how much they wanted him, doesn't it?"

He lay there, the last comer, in his uniform and bloody bandages, his stiff, peaked mouth open, his legs stretched apart as they had sprung in his last agony.

"Oh, John—"

She cried out in her fright and put her hands over her eyes. She had always been afraid of the dead bodies. She didn't want to know where they put them, and nobody told her.

John gripped her wrists so that he hurt her and dragged down her hands.
He looked into her eyes, still laughing.

"I thought you weren't afraid of anything," he said.

"I'm not afraid when we're out there. I'm only afraid of seeing them.
You know I am."

She turned, but he had put himself between her and the door. She wrenched at the latch, sobbing.

"How could you be so cruel? What did you do it for? What did you do it for?"

"I wanted you to see what they've done with him. There's his clean bed.
They haven't even taken his boots off."

"You brute. You utter brute!"

A steely sound like a dropped hammer came from behind the glass partition; then the sliding of a latch. John opened the door a little way and she slipped out past him.

"Next time," he said, "perhaps you'll do as you're told."

She wanted to get away by herself. Not into her own room, where Gwinnie, who had been unloading ambulance trains half the night, now rested. The McClane Corps was crowding into the messroom for tea. She passed through without looking at any of them and out to the balcony, closing the French window behind her. She could hide there beyond the window where the wall was blank.

She leaned back, flattening herself against the wall….

Something would have to be done. They couldn't go on like this…. Her mind went to and fro, quickly, with short jerky movements, distressed; it had to do so much thinking in so short a time.

She would always have to reckon with John's fear. And John's fear was not what she had thought it, a sad, helpless, fatal thing, sad because it knew itself doom-like and helpless. It was cruel, with a sort of mental violence in it, worse than the cruel animal fear of the men in the plantation. She could see that his cowardice had something to do with his cruelty and that his cruelty was somehow linked up with his cowardice; but she couldn't for the life of her imagine the secret of the bond. She only felt that it would be something secret and horrible; something that she would rather not know about.

And she knew that since yesterday he had left off caring for her. His love had died a sudden, cruel and violent death. His cowardice had done that too…. And he had left off caring for the wounded. It was almost as if he hated them, because they lay so still, keeping him back, keeping him out under the fire.

Queer, but all those other cowardly things that he had done had seemed to her unreal even when she had seen him doing them; and afterwards when she thought about them they were unreal, as if they hadn't happened, as if she had just imagined them. Incredible, and yet the sort of thing you could imagine if you tried. But that last devilish thing he did, it had a hard, absolute reality. Just because it was inconceivable, because you couldn't have imagined it, you couldn't doubt that it had happened.

It was happening now. As long as she lived it would go on happening in her mind. She would never get away from it.

There were things that men did, bestial things, cruel things, things they did to women. But not things like this. They didn't think of them, because this thing wasn't thinkable.

Why had John done it? Why? She supposed he wanted to hurt her and frighten her because he had been hurt, because he had been frightened. And because he knew she loved her wounded men. Perhaps he wanted to make her hate him and have done with it.

Well, she did hate him. Oh, yes, she hated him.

She heard the window open and shut and a woman's footsteps swishing on the stone floor. Trixie Rankin came to her, with her quick look that fell on you like a bird swooping. She stood facing her, upright and stiff in her sharp beauty; her lips were pressed together as though they had just closed on some biting utterance; but her eyes were soft and intent.

"What's he done this time?" she said.

"He hasn't done anything."

"Oh yes, he has. He's done something perfectly beastly."

It was no use lying to Trixie. She knew what he was like, even if she didn't know about yesterday, even if she didn't know what he had done now. Nobody could know that. She looked straight at Trixie, with broad, open eyes that defied her to know.

"What makes you think so?"

"Your face."

"Damn my face. It's got nothing to do with you, Trixie."

"Yes it has. If it gives the show away I can't help seeing, can I?"

"You can help talking."

"Yes, I can help talking."

The arrogance had gone out of her face. It could change in a minute from the face of a bird of prey to the face of a watching angel. It looked at her as it looked at wounded men: tender and protective. But Trixie couldn't see that you didn't want any tenderness and protection just then, or any recognition of your wound.

"You rum little blighter," she said. "Come along. Nobody's going to talk."

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.

She talked; but her thoughts ran by themselves on a line separate from her speech.

"We got in six wounded." … "That curé was there again. He was splendid." … They didn't know anything. They condemned him on the evidence of her face, the face she had brought back to them, coming straight from John. Her face had the mark of what he had done to her…. "Much firing? Not so very much." … She remembered what he had said to her about her face. "Something's happened to it. Some cruelty. Some damnable cruelty…."

"We'll have to go out there again."

They were all listening, and Alice Bartrum had made fresh tea for her; McClane was setting down her cup. She was thirsty; she longed for the fresh, fragrant tea; she was soothed by the kind, listening faces. Suddenly they drew away; they weren't listening any more. John had come into the room.

It flashed on her that all these people thought that John was her lover, her lover in the way they understood love. They were looking at him as if they hated him. But John's face was quiet and composed and somehow triumphant; it held itself up against all the hostile faces; it fronted McClane and his men as their equal; it was the face of a man who has satisfied a lust. His whole body had a look of assurance and accomplishment, as if his cruelty had given him power.

And with it all he kept his dreadful beauty. It hurt her to look at him.

She rose, leaving her tea untasted, and went out of the room. She couldn't sit there with him. She had given him up. Her horror of him was pure, absolute. It would never return on itself to know pity or remorse.