XXVIII
Hugo was waiting for me on the platform. We made our way through the hurrying crowds of people, and out of the station, hardly speaking a word.
It was a grey day, a heavy overcast sky threatened rain. We crossed Trafalgar Square, to the Admiralty Arch; then we went through it, and turned to the left, across the open space of the Horse Guards Parade. We walked along where the water used to be, by the War Trades Intelligence Department, those strange piles of Government buildings that usurped the bright coolness of the water. In one small remaining corner the pelicans still lived, crowding with ruffled feathers on their little clumps of rock.
We walked along to the end, to Buckingham Palace, then we turned back, to the right, along the Mall.
I felt a new excitement and delight at Hugo’s presence; at being with him again after so many years, and so many changes. The sympathy and understanding that had been so much a part of our relation before seemed there as strong as ever, now we were together again. We spoke very little; there seemed no need for speech. From time to time we looked at each other and, as our eyes met, a sense of assurance and security seemed to pass from one to the other.
It seemed to me as we walked as though we two were alone in a world of desolation and ruin. I felt my thoughts and my emotions of the last three years rising up, formulating themselves, seeking expression. I was possessed by a sense of experience, of our separate experiences, to be shared now, to be unified, and made whole.
We crossed Piccadilly and turned into Bond Street.
Hugo had chosen an exhibition of Raemakers’ cartoons as the pictures we were to see. We took our tickets at the door, gave up our umbrellas, and were inside.
We walked round the two small rooms for a long time. Hugo looked at the pictures, dumbly, intensely, and I watched Hugo.
We stopped before a picture of a wood in autumn; the leaves falling from the trees, and a dead soldier, a German, lying on the ground.
‘When the leaves fall, you shall have peace.’
The words from a speech of the Kaiser’s were below it. I felt a cold grip at my heart, at my throat, and the picture swam before me . . .
‘When the leaves fall, you shall have peace.’ The words echoed through my brain, emptily, metallically. I saw the dead soldier, huddled, hunched up in the wet ditch, and the leaves falling over him, and I felt suddenly that I must cry out, scream, that it was more than could be borne.
I turned to Hugo: his eyes were fixed on the picture, and again I saw that haunted, terrified expression that had struck me when I saw him first, but it was more now. I felt suddenly, that my own emotion was somehow a reflection of his emotion, that my own despair was an echo of his despair.
‘You shall have peace . . . You shall have peace . . .’
I felt at that moment that I was seeing with his eyes and feeling with his mind. I was fascinated, horrified, paralysed; then I broke the spell:
‘No, Hugo,’ I said, and my voice sounded rough and unnatural to myself, ‘come away, come away quickly!’
I seized hold of his arm and pulled him after me, through the swinging glass doors, and down the steps.
Outside, the rain had begun to fall, a thin, drizzling rain . . . we paused here and drew breath: I felt as though I had woken up from a very ghastly dream.
I laughed, nervously, I knew, and shivered⸺
I said:
‘Those are terrible pictures—they make one remember and think⸺’
Hugo stared at me, with sombre, unseeing eyes.
‘Yes, they make one think,’ he repeated.
We walked out into the street; I kept my hand on his arm: I felt dizzy, and still frightened at my own thoughts and feelings, and almost frightened of him.
As we turned into Piccadilly the rain came on more heavily, beating and pattering against our faces; we remembered suddenly that we had left our umbrellas in the gallery; we turned and hurried back again.
When we came out for the second time, we were calmer, and more established.
We turned into the nearest tea shop, Stewart’s, at the corner of Bond Street, and went upstairs. There was an empty table by the window; we went to it and sat down.
Hugo leaned his chin on his hands, and looked across at me.
He said:
‘That is a wicked picture, Helen,⸺do you know what it is to want peace?’
I said:
‘I think I begin to know.’
‘I won’t give up,’ he went on, as though he were talking to himself, ‘I won’t; I am not going to be killed; I am going right through to the end. Nothing can be worse now.’
He buried his face, and shivered.
I asked:
‘Do you want very much to be killed?’
And he bent his head.
‘I am frightened sometimes,’ he said, ‘I think I am going mad in the night; even here; I see things, and hear them, over and over again; I am afraid of doing it on purpose; of letting it happen. . . . George would never have got like this. . . .’
‘No, George was different. I think, perhaps, it was easier for him.’
‘Yes, George was braver than me, and now, you see, he has finished. He has not got to go on afterwards as I must. I must go on, partly because of George, and can you think what it will be like, Helen, afterwards, when we are sane again, and realize what we have been doing?’
I said:
‘I can’t think about afterwards at all, Hugo. I can’t look ahead at all beyond next week.’
We were silent then, looking out of the window at the rain in the street. It pattered on the tops of omnibuses, on umbrellas, on mackintoshes, on the grey paving stones. The humming noise of the traffic rose up to us, muffled, through the double glass, and all those people, and the hurry, and the busyness, seemed very far away.
The waitress came to take our order; we asked for tea, and turned back to the window.
I said:
‘Yes; we must go on; it is all we can do now; just wait and hold out . . . on and on and on. . . .’
And he repeated:
‘Yes; that is all; somebody must go on; that is the only way to look at it, I think.’
I said:
‘Oh, Hugo, is it possible that all this is only three years?’
Hugo looked up with his hesitating smile.
‘Three years has not much meaning now,’ he said, ‘has it? We didn’t know anything then; we hadn’t begun. We don’t know much now; afterwards, if we can go through with it till the end, we may know something, perhaps.’
He added abruptly:
‘I am sorry for you, Helen.’
‘And I, for you,’ I said.
‘It is the same for us both, in a way; for everybody, I suppose.’
‘No, not quite everybody, I think; but for you and me. I am glad we have met again, Hugo, so glad.’
He put out his hand across the table and took mine.
‘I wondered if you would come to-day,’ he said.
The waitress had brought our tea and put it down, but we had not noticed her.
There was to us both, I think, great consolation in this clasping of hands: strength and companionship in a world of destruction.
After tea we went out in the rain, and walked in the Green Park.
We walked up and down, backwards and forwards, talking a little, not very much, of casual, trivial things; comforted and upheld by each other’s nearness.
At last we went back to the station, and Hugo saw me into the train.
I said:
‘Let me know when you come back,’
He said:
‘I shall come back in ten days.’
‘In ten days?’
‘Yes, in ten days.’