Adrienne Toner: A Novel

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

He wanted to ask something about Paris and the long-distance gun firing on it every day and he seemed to see it over the edge of the trench, far away on the horizon of No-man’s-land, a tiny city flaming far into the sky. But other words bubbled up and he heard himself crying: “Mother! Mother!” and remembered, stopping himself with an act of will, that they all said that when they were dying. But as he closed his eyes he felt her very near and knew that it would be sweet to die and find her.

A long time must have passed. Was it days or only the time of daylight? It was night now and a shaded light shone from a recess behind him and thoughts, visions, memories raced through his mind. Nancy; Barney; he would never see them again, then: poor Lydia and civilization. “Civilization will see me out,” he thought and he wondered if they had taken off the wings of the Flying Victory when they packed her.

A rhythm was beating in his brain. Music was it? Something of Bach’s? It gathered words to itself and shaped itself sentence by sentence into something he had heard? or read? Ah, he was glad to have found it. “Under the orders of your devoted officers you will march against the enemy or fall where you stand, facing the foe. To those who die I say: You will not die: you will enter living into immortality, and God will receive you into his bosom.” He seemed to listen to the words as he lay, quietly smiling. But it was music after all for, as he listened, they merged into the “St. Matthew Passion.” He had heard it, of course, with Lydia, at the Temple. But Lydia did not really care very much for Bach. She might care more for “Litanei.” She had sung it standing beside him with foolish white roses over her ears. How unlike Lydia to wear those roses. And was it Lydia who stood there? A mental perplexity mingled with the physical pain and spoiled his peace. It was not Lydia’s, that white face in the coffin with wet ivy behind it. What suffering was this that beat upon his heart? The music had faded all away and he saw faces everywhere, dying faces; and blood and terrible mutilations. All the suffering of the war, worse, far worse than the mere claws and fangs that tore at him. Dying boys choked out their breaths in agonies of conscious loneliness, yearning for faces they would never see again. Oh, how many he had seen die like that! Intolerable to watch them. And could one do nothing? “Cigarettes. Give them cigarettes,” he tried to tell somebody. “And marmalade for breakfast; and phonographs, and then they will enter living into immortality”—No: he did not mean that. What did he mean? He could catch at nothing now. Thoughts were tossed and tumbled like the rubbish of wreckage from an inundated town on the deep currents of his anguish. A current that raced and seethed and carried him away. He saw it. Its breathless speed was like the fever in his blood. If it went faster he would lose his breath. Church-bells ringing on the banks lost theirs as he sped past so swiftly and made a trail of whining sound.—Effie! Effie! It was poor little Effie, drowning. He saw her wild, small face, battling. Bubbles boiled up about his cry.

Suddenly the torrent was stilled. Without commotion, without tumult, it was stilled. There was a dam somewhere; it had stopped racing; he could get his breath. Still and slow; oh! it was delicious to feel that quiet hand on his forehead; his mother’s hand, and to know that Effie was safe. He lay with closed eyes and saw a smooth waterfall sliding and curving with green grey depths into the lower currents of the stream. He remembered the stream well, now; one of his beloved French rivers; one of the smaller, sylvan rivers, too small for majesty; with silver poplars spaced against the sky on either bank and a small town, white and pink and pearly-grey, clear on the horizon. Tranquil sails were above him and the bells from the distant church-tower floated to him across the fields. Soundlessly, slowly, he felt himself borne into oblivion.

The black-browed nurse was tending him next morning. “You are better,” she said, smiling at him. “You slept all night. No; it’s a shame, but you mayn’t have water yet.” She put the lemon and glycerine to his lips. “The pain is easier, isn’t it?”

He said it was. He felt that he must not stir an inch so as to keep it easier, but he could not have stirred had he wanted to, for he was all tightly swathed and bandaged. He remembered something he wanted specially to ask: “Paris? They haven’t got it yet?”

“They’ll never get it!” she smiled proudly. “Everything is going splendidly.”

The English surgeon was such a nice fellow. He had spectacles on a square-tipped nose and a square, chubby face; yet his hair was nearly white. Oldmeadow remembered, as if of days before the flood, that his name was a distinguished one. Perhaps it was morphia they gave him, after his wound was dressed, or perhaps he fainted. The day passed in a hot and broken stupor and at night the tides of fever rose again and carried him away. But, again, before he had lost his breath, before he had quite gone down into delirium, the quiet hand came and sent him, under sails, to sleep.

Next day Oldmeadow knew, from the way the surgeon looked at him, that his case was grave. His face was grim as he bent over the dressing and he hurt horribly. They told him, when it was over, that he had been very brave, and, like a child, he was pleased that they should tell him so. But the pain was worse all day and the sense of the submerging fever imminent, and he lay with closed eyes and longed for the night that brought the hand. Hours, long hours passed before it came. Hours of sunlight when, behind his eyelids, he saw red, and hours of twilight when he saw mauve. Then, for a little while, it was a soft, dense grey he saw, like a bat’s wing, and then the small light shone across his bed; he knew that the night had come, and felt, at last, the hand fall softly on his head.

He lay for some time feeling the desired peace flow into him and then, through its satisfaction, another desire pushed up into his consciousness and he remembered that, more than about Paris, he had wanted to speak to the nurse about what she did for him and thank her.