The Romantic

by May Sinclair

XIV

It was Saturday, the tenth of October, the day after the fall of Antwerp. The Germans were pressing closer round Ghent; they might march in any day. She had been in Belgium a hundred years; she had lived a hundred years under this doom.

But at last she was free of John. Utterly free. His mind would have no power over her any more. Nor yet his body. She was glad that he had not been her lover. Supposing her body had been bound to him so that it couldn't get away? The struggle had been hard enough when her first flash came to her; and when she had fought against her knowledge and denied it, unable to face the truth that did violence to her passion; and when she had given him up and was left with just that, the beauty of his body, and it had hurt her to look at him.

Oh well, nothing could hurt her now. And anyhow she would get through to-day without being afraid of what might happen. John couldn't do anything awful; he had been ordered on an absolutely safe expedition, taking medical stores to the convent hospital at Bruges and convoying Gurney, the sick chauffeur, to Ostend for England. Charlotte was to go out with Sutton, and Gwinnie was to take poor Gurney's place. She was glad she was going with Billy. Whatever happened Billy would go through it without caring, his mind fixed on the solid work.

And John, for an hour before he started, had been going about in gloom, talking of death. His death.

They were looking over the last letter from his father which he had asked her to answer for him. It seemed that John had told him the chances were he would be killed and had asked him whether in this case he would allow the Roden ambulances to be handed over to McClane. And the old man had given his consent.

"Isn't it a pity to frighten him?" she said.

"He's no business to be frightened. It's my death. If I can face it, he can. I'm simply making necessary arrangements."

She could see that. At the same time it struck her that he wanted you to see that he exposed himself to all the risks of death, to see how he faced it. She had no patience with that talk about death; that pitiful bolstering up of his romance.

"If McClane says much more you can tell him."

He was counting on this transfer of the ambulances to get credit with
McClane; to silence him.

There were other letters which he had told her to answer. As soon as he had started she went into his room to look for them. If they were not on the chimneypiece they would be in the drawer with his razors and pockethandkerchiefs.

It was John's room, after she had gone through it, that showed her what he was doing.

Sutton looked in before she had finished. She called to him, "Billy, you might come here a minute."

He came in, eyebrows lifted at the inquisition.

"What's up?"

"I'm afraid John isn't coming back."

"Not coming back? Of course he's coming back."

"No. I think he's—got off."

"You mean he's—"

"Yes. Bolted."

"What on earth makes you think that?"

"He's taken all sorts of things—pyjamas, razors, all his pockethandkerchiefs… I had to look through his drawers to find those letters he told me to answer."

Sutton had gone through into the slip of white tiled lavatory beyond. She followed him.

"My God," he said, "yes. He's taken his toothbrush and his sleeping draught…. You know he tried to get leave yesterday and they wouldn't give it him?"

"No. That makes it simply awful."

"Pretty awful."

"Billy—we must get him back."

"I—I don't know about that. He isn't much good, is he? I think we'd better let him go."

"Don't you see how awful it'll be for the Corps?"

"The Corps? Does that matter? McClane would take us all on to-morrow."

"I mean for us. You and me and Gwinnie. He's our Corps, and we're it."

"Sharlie—with the Germans coming into Ghent do you honestly believe anybody'll remember what he did or didn't do?"

"Yes. We're going to stick on with the Belgian Army. It'll be remembered against us. Besides, it'll kill his father."

"He'll do that any way. He's rotten through and through."

"No. He was splendid in the beginning. He might be splendid some day again. But if we let him go off and do this he's done for."

"He's done for anyhow. Isn't it better to recognize that he's rotten?
McClane wouldn't have him. He saw what he was."

"He didn't see him at Berlaere. He was splendid there."

"My dear child, don't you know why? He didn't see there was any danger.
He was too stupid to see it."

"I saw it."

"You're not stupid."

"He did see it at the end."

"At the end, yes—When he let you go back for the guns."

She remembered. She remembered his face, the little beads of sweat glittering. He couldn't help that.

"Look here, from the time he realised the danger, did he go out or did he stay under cover?"

She didn't answer.

"There," he said, "you see."

"Oh, Billy, won't you leave him one shred?"

"No. Not one shred."

Yet, even now, if he could only be splendid—If he could only be it! Why shouldn't Billy leave him one shred? After all, he didn't know all the awful things John had done; and she would never tell him…. He did know two things, the two things she didn't know. She had got to know them. The desire that urged her to the completion of her knowledge pursued her now. She would possess him in her mind if in no other way.

"Billy—do you remember that day at Melle, when John lost me? Did you tell him I was going back with you?"

"No. I didn't."

Then he had left her. And he had lied to both of them.

"Was the boy dead or alive when he left him?"

"He was alive all right. We could have saved him."

He had died—he had died of fright, then.

"You said he was dead."

"I know I did. I lied."

"… And before that—when he was with you and Trixie on that battlefield—Did he—"

"Yes. Then, too … You see there aren't any shreds. The only thing you can say is he can't help it. Nobody'd have been hard on him if he hadn't gassed so much about danger."

"That's the part you can't understand…. But, Billy, why did you lie about him?"

"Because I didn't want you to know, then. I knew it would hurt you, I knew it would hurt you more than anything else."

"That was rather wonderful of you."

"Wasn't wonderful at all. I knew because what you think, what you feel, matters more to me than anything else. Except perhaps my job. I have to keep that separate."

Her mind slid over that, not caring, returning to the object of its interest.

"Look here, Billy, you may be right. It probably doesn't matter to us.
But it'll be perfectly awful for him."

"They can't do anything to him, Sharlie."

"It's what he'll do to himself."

"Suicide? Not he."

"I don't mean that. Can't you see that when he gets away to England, safe, and the funk settles down he'll start romancing all over again. He'll see the whole war again like that; and then he'll remember what he's done. He'll have to live all his life remembering…."

"He won't. You'll remember—You'll suffer. You're feeling the shame he ought to feel and doesn't."

"Well, somebody's got to feel it…. And he'll feel it too. He won't be let off. As long as he lives he'll remember…. I don't want him to have that suffering."

"He's brought it on himself, Sharlie."

"I don't care. I don't want him to have it. I couldn't bear it if he got away."

"Of course, if you're going to be unhappy about it—"

"The only thing is, can we go after him? Can we spare a car?"

"Well yes, I can manage that all right. The fact is, the Germans may really be in to-morrow or Monday, and we're thinking of evacuating all the British wounded to-day. There are some men here that we ought to take to Ostend. I've been talking to the President about it."

And in the end they went with their wounded, less than an hour after John had started.

"I don't say I'll bring him back," said Sutton. "But at any rate we can find out what he's up to." He meditated…. "We mayn't have to bring him. I shouldn't wonder if he came back on his own. He's like that. He can't stand danger yet he keeps on coming back to it. Can't leave it alone."

"I know. 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.

"I don't think so. He'll have to put up at the Convent for a bit, to let
Gurney rest."

They had missed the Convent and were running down a narrow street towards the Market Place when they found John. He came on across a white bridge over a canal at the bottom. He was escorted by some Belgian women, dressed in black; they were talking and pointing up the street.

He said he had been to lunch in the town and had lost himself there and they were showing him the way back to the Convent.

She had seen all that before somewhere, John coming over the Canal bridge with the women in black…. She remembered. That was in one of her three dreams. Only what she saw now was incomplete. There had been something more in the dream. Something had happened.

It happened half an hour later when she went out to find John in the Convent garden where he was walking with the nuns. The garden shimmered in a silver mist from the canal, the broad grass plots, the clipped hedges, the cones and spikes of yew, the tall, feathery chrysanthemums, the trailing bowers and arches, were netted and laced and webbed with the silver mist. Down at the bottom of the path the forms of John and the three women showed blurred and insubstantial and still.

Presently they emerged, solid and clear; the nuns in their black habits and the raking white caps like wings that set them sailing along. They were showing John their garden, taking a shy, gentle, absorbed possession of him.

And as she came towards him John passed her without speaking. But his face had turned to her with the look she had seen before. Eyes of hatred, eyes that repudiated and betrayed her.

The nuns had stopped, courteously, to greet her; she fell behind with one of them; the two others had overtaken John who had walked on, keeping up his stiff, repudiating air.

The air, the turn of the head, the look that she had dreamed. Only in the dream it had hurt her, and now she was hard and had no pain.

* * * * *

It was in the Convent garden that they played it out, in one final, astounding conversation.

The nuns had brought two chairs out on to the flagged terrace and set a small table there covered with a white cloth. Thus invited, John had no choice but to take his place beside her. Still he retained his mood.

(The nuns had left them. Sutton was in one of the wards, helping with an operation.)

"I thought," he said, "that I was going to have peace…."

It seemed to her that they had peace. They had been so much at the mercy of chance moments that this secure hour given to them in the closed garden seemed, in its quietness, immense.

"… But first it's Sutton, then it's you."

"We needn't say anything unless you like. There isn't much to be said."

"Oh, isn't there!"

"Not," she said, "if you're coming back."

"Of course I'm coming back…. Look here, Charlotte. You didn't suppose I was really going to bolt, did you?"

"Were you going to change into your pyjamas at Ostend?"

"My pyjamas? I brought them for Gurney."

"And your sleeping draught was for Gurney?"

"Of course it was."

"And your razors and your toothbrush, too. 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."

"What was I to think?"

"Why, that all the damnable things you said about me weren't true."

"I didn't say anything."

"You've betrayed me by the things you didn't say."

"Why should I have betrayed you?"

"You know why. When a woman betrays a man it's always for one reason."

He threw his head back to strike at her with his eyes, hard and keen, dark blue like the blade of a new knife … "Because he hasn't given her what she wants."

"Oh, what I want—I thought we'd settled that long ago."

"You've never settled it. It isn't in you to settle it."

"I can't talk to you about that. You're too horrible. But I didn't betray you."

"You listened to people who betrayed me. If you cared for me in any decent way you'd have stood by me."

"I have stood by you through thick and thin. I've lied your lies. There isn't one of your lies I haven't backed. I've done everything I could think of to keep people from knowing about you."

"Yet you go and tell Sutton that I've bolted. That I'm a deserter."

"Yes, when it was all over. If you'd got away everybody'd have known. As it is, only Billy and I know; and he's safe."

"You insist that I was trying to get away? I own I thought of it. But one doesn't do everything one thinks of…. No…. Don't imagine I was sick of the war, or sick of Belgium. It's you I'm sick of."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. You had your warning. I told you what would happen if you let me see you wanted me."

"You think you've seen that?"

"I've seen nothing else."

"Once, perhaps. Twice. Once when you came to me on Barrow Hill. And when we were crossing; once. And each time you never saw it."

"Anybody can see. It's in your face. In your eyes and mouth. You can't hide your lust."

"My—'lust.' Don't you know I only cared for you because I'd done with that?"

They stopped. The nuns were back again, bringing great cups of hot black coffee, coming quietly, and going quietly away. It was wonderful, all that beauty and gentleness and peace existing in the horror of the war, and through this horror within horror that John had made.

They drank their coffee, slowly, greedily, prolonging this distraction from their torment. Charlotte finished first.

"You say I want you. I own I did once. But I don't now. Why, I care more for the scrubbiest little Belgian with a smashed finger than I do for you."

"I suppose you can satisfy your erotic susceptibilities that way."

"I haven't any, I tell you. I only cared for you because I thought you were clean. I thought your mind was beautiful. And you aren't clean. And your mind's the ugliest thing I know. And the cruelest…. Let's get it right, John. I can forgive your funking. If your nerves are jumpy they're jumpy. I daresay I shall be jumpy if the Germans come into Ghent before I'm out of it. I can forgive everything you've done to me. I can forgive your lying. I see there's nothing left for you but to lie…. But I can't forgive your not caring for the wounded. That's cruel…. You didn't care for that boy at Melle—"

John's mouth opened as if he were going to say something. He seemed to gasp.

"—No, you didn't or you wouldn't have left him. Whatever your funk was like, you couldn't have left him if you'd cared, any more than I could have left you."

"He was dead when I left him."

"He was still warm when I found him. Billy thought you were bringing him away. He says he wasn't dead."

"He lies, then. But you'll take his word against mine."

"Yes," she said simply. "And he says he didn't tell you I was going on with him. You don't care for me. If you'd cared you couldn't have left me."

"I thought you said if it was a toss up between you and a wounded man—?
There were wounded men in that car."

"There was a wounded man with me. You left him…. Don't imagine I cared about myself, whether I lived or died. It was because I cared about you. I cared so awfully."

He jerked out a laugh. One light, short sound of dismissal and contempt.