Battlewrack

by F. Britten Austin

From now onwards her life definitely assumed this double phase.

In the hospital she was the Sister Braithwaite that all had known, diligent, bravely smiling, conscientious in her duty. Those about her remarked only that there was sometimes a curious stillness in her mien, spoke pityingly among themselves of the sad loss of her soldier lover. But death in a hospital is no rare catastrophe and none lingered on the topic. There was much to do, a continual stream of new arrivals from the distant conflict, the doubtful fate of many of those already long suffering. There were deaths, recoveries, operations of professional interest.

Number Ten went slowly but steadily towards health. Sister Braithwaite deliberately avoided all contact with him save the professional. When she chatted with a patient in the ward it was not with him. His gaze was reproachful, and she would not see it. Sometimes when she approached him he would, half-jokingly, reiterate that she had saved him. She would not hear. A strange sense of insecurity disturbed her in his presence. She half divined that he nursed a project——. She fled the glance of the steady, resolute eyes in the strong face. When at last he had made such progress that he could be removed to a convalescent ward she was glad at his departure.

At night she passed into another world. There was no war in that life—never had been war. From dream to dream she lived through a continuous existence—the wife of Ronald. It was all vividly real. It was the life they would have led—it played itself out now in what to her daytime consciousness was a realm of shadows. Not always did she dream, or rather not always did her consciousness register the events through which she passed. But later dreams had dream-memories in them and the record had no gaps. Time passed in that dream-world without relation to the terrestrial days. In one night she frequently lived through long periods. He was always kind to her, always loving. She, too, loved him passionately, with all her soul.

But in the daytime her being shrank from that shadow-life. She was afraid—mysteriously, primitively afraid. She could not mourn as she would have liked to mourn. Sometimes she asked herself whether she was not ceasing to love her dead affianced. She tried to evoke his image—and often, to her distress, succeeded not. The strongly masculine features of Number Ten, Captain Lavering, rose before her mental vision, would not be banished. Then she despised herself bitterly. In remorse she willed herself forward to the night, bade herself not shrink, and when the hour came gave herself to the darkness tremulously, like a slave of the harem who goes into the chamber of her lord. The portal passed she was happy, completely happy—as happy as she would have been the wife of Ronald in the dainty little home that never could be other than the home of her dreams. With strange, almost terrifying, completeness the shadow-life evolved. The house she lived in she knew in all its details, had its rooms that she preferred, views from its windows that she loved or veiled. The presence of her husband was a reality that filled it. She knew his footsteps, heard his voice. (It rang often in her ears when her eyes unclosed in the little matchboarded cubicle suddenly unfamiliar.) They had long, long conversations together—wonderful little interludes where their always underlying love blossomed into delicate flower. She saw his face clearly, saw that it was changing slightly, growing more set, less boyish. There were difficulties—the difficulties of real life—to be encountered. An anguished struggle with bills and finances that would not meet wrung her soul all one night. She pledged herself to such brave economies! But the difficulties were overcome, the memory of them lost in the embrace of her lover. Rarely, rarely was she unhappy until she woke.

And day by day, not keeping pace with her other life, her life of work in the hospital went on. Week linked into week, month into month. The great open moors around her changed their hue, were often shrouded in mist. In December the first frosts glassed the pools. Many were the patients who had come and gone. The little cemetery under the hill was fuller. Other sufferers were more fortunate. Captain Lavering was fully convalescent, nearing his discharge. She saw him often at a distance, avoided him when he tried to approach her. She could not have explained why, even to herself. Somewhere deep down in her, the virility of his aspect set a chord vibrating. She was always extremely, almost painfully, conscious of his propinquity. For many weeks they had not exchanged a word.

There came a night wonderful above all others. She thrilled with a strange new ecstasy, drawn from deep springs. It was the quiet, speechless ecstasy of some mysterious fulfilment. She was filled with a great tenderness that welled up and overflowed like a source. There was something warm against her heart. She looked down and saw that it was a newborn babe. She was in bed. Then, in a great surge of deeply flowing joy, she understood. She was a mother—the mother of Ronald's child! She could have cried for joy that lacked expression. Her fingers stroked thin silky hair on a tiny head.

Suddenly she was aware that Ronald was looking down on her. She yearned up to him, but as she did so she was conscious that her allegiance was divided. Not all of her, as heretofore, reached out to him undividedly his. There was a dumb insistent claim at her breast. She smiled to disguise it.

But it seemed that he understood. His face was troubled, the vivid eyes reproachful. He leaned over her.