Regiment of Women

by Clemence Dane

She told herself so, and tried to be amused at her adventure, and hummed a confident little tune as she plodded on, very careful not to look behind her. Her shoes, thudding and squelching in the wet mess of mould and green stuff, made more noise than one would have thought possible for one pair of feet, and woke the oddest echoes.

Of course, it was impossible that any one could be following her.... But the wood was so horribly silent that her own breathing and clumsy footfalls (there could be nothing else) counterfeited the noises of pursuit.... She could have sworn there was a presence at her elbow, in her rear, moving as she moved, stumbling as she stumbled. Twice she faced round abruptly, standing still—but she saw nothing but the wall of vegetation, motionless, silent, yet insistently alive. She felt that every tree, every leaf, every blade of grass, was watching her with green, unwinking eyes. There was nothing more in the wood than there had been a pleasant hour ago—less indeed, for she realised suddenly that the sun had gone in and that it was cold; yet she owned to herself at last that she was nervous, vaguely uneasy. Instantly, by that mere act of recognition, fright was born in her—unreasonable and unreasoning fright, that, in the length of a thought, pervaded her entire personality, crisping her hair, catching at her throat, paralysing her mind. The wood-panic had her in its grip—the age-old terror that still lies in wait where trees are gathered together, though the god that begot it be dead these nineteen hundred years.

She began to run.

It was impossible to pass quickly through the tangled undergrowth; but sheer fright gave her skill to avoid real obstacles, strength to crash over and through the mere wreckage of the wood. She turned and doubled like a hare, yet desperately, with the hare's terror of the sudden turn that might confront her with the presence at her heels. She could endure its pursuit, but she knew that its revelation would be more than she could bear. She was so far merely and indefinitely frightened, but to face the unknown would be to confront fear itself. And she was more frightened of fear than of any evil she knew. She could, she thought, meet pain or sickness, or any mere misery, with sufficient calmness, but the fear of fear was an obsession. She tore through the wood, shaken and gasping with terror of the greater terror she every moment expected to be forced to undergo; for almost the only clear thought remaining to her, in that onrush of panic, was the realisation that there was, at her elbow, in her heart, physical or metaphysical, she knew not which, some as yet veiled fact waiting to be revealed, in view of which her present agitation was trivial and meaningless.

She ran on, blind and blundering; yet her feet were so clogged by the weight of earth and wet, her thoughts by the sweat of the fear that was on them, that neither seemed to move for all her willing. And all the while, another part of her consciousness sat aloof, critical and detached, laughing at her for an excitable fool, analysing, in Clare's crispest accents, the illusions which were bewildering her, and wondering coolly that any girl of her age could so let her imagination run away with her.

She pulled herself together with an immense effort of will.

That was the truth.... It was her own imagination that was literally and physically running away with her, whipping her tired body into unnecessary exertion, flogging her into mad flight from this pleasant, harmless place, with its hideous and horrible suggestion of evil at hand.... But the evil was in her own mind.... There was nothing pursuing her, no vague ghost at her elbow.... The horror was in herself, to be faced, and fought, and trampled.... Running would not help her ... she would only carry her terror with her.... For an instant she had a lightning glimpse of the reasons of the Sadducean attitude to personality, and its desperate denials of future existence. She was suddenly appalled at the hideous possibility of existing eternally with her own undying thoughts for company. She wondered if there were really such a thing as soul suicide, and thought that, if so, many must have chosen to commit it.

Here her shifting, crowding thoughts blotted out the glimmer of understanding, as flies clustering on a window-pane can blot out light; yet the word suicide remained in her mind, disturbing, vaguely suggestive. It was connected with something terrible—she could not remember what—that in its turn was one with the vague horror at her elbow, that walked with the echo of her footsteps and panted with the echoes of her breaths, and yet was not real at all, but only in her mind.

She did not believe she should ever find her way out of the wood.... The hyacinths in her arms were so heavy—a queerly familiar weight: and the sun had gone in, which had, somehow, something to do with the trouble.... She felt the black depression of the winter months that she had left Utterbridge to escape settling down on her once more. She turned hopelessly to elude it, but it surrounded her like a fog, as indeed she half believed it to be. She supposed they had sudden fogs in the country, when the sun went in.... And the sun had gone in because she had picked all the hyacinths.... She remembered the story clearly enough now.... The sun had played at quoits with a child, and had thrown amiss, and killed it, and the purple blood had trickled down from the child's forehead.... So the sun had turned it into purple hyacinths.... But she, Alwynne, had been gathering all the hyacinths, and they were a heavy bunch, heavy as a dead child's body ... and in another minute they would be disenchanted, and she would be carrying a dead child's body in her arms....

She stood still, gazing down at the flowers, white and glassy-eyed with terror, wondering that she was still alive and not yet mad. For she knew that the fear she had feared was upon her at last. She dared not blink lest in that second the change should take place, and she should find Louise, long buried, in her arms. Because, of course, it was Louise who had been following her all the while.... Louise—who had committed suicide.... She was following Alwynne, because it was Alwynne's fault.... Clare had said so.... Well—at least she could tell Louise that she had meant no harm....