And she stooped impetuously to lay her hand on his lips. He kissed the hand, held it, and remained silent, his eyes fixed upon the lake. On that day week he would probably just have rejoined his regiment. It was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bailleul. Hot work, he heard, was expected. There was still a scandalous shortage of ammunition—and if there was really to be a 'push,' the losses would be appalling. Man after man that he knew had been killed within a week—two or three days—twenty-four hours even!—of rejoining. Supposing that within a fortnight Nelly sat here, looking at this lake, with the War Office telegram in her hand—'Deeply regret to inform you, etc.' This was not a subject on which he had ever allowed himself to dwell, more than in his changed circumstances he was bound to dwell. Every soldier, normally, expects to get through. But of course he had done everything that was necessary for Nelly. His will was in the proper hands; and the night before their wedding he had written a letter to her, to be given her if he fell. Otherwise he had taken little account of possible death; nor had it cost him any trouble to banish the thought of it.
But the beauty of the evening—of this old earth, which takes no account of the perishing of men—and Nelly's warm life beside him, hanging upon his, perhaps already containing within it the mysterious promise of another life, had suddenly brought upon him a tremor of soul—an inward shudder. Did he really believe in existence after death—in a meeting again, in some dim other scene, if they were violently parted now? He had been confirmed while at school. His parents were Church people of a rather languid type, and it seemed the natural thing to do. Since then he had occasionally taken the Communion, largely to please an elder school-friend, who was ardently devout, and was now a Chaplain on the Western front. But what did it really mean to him?—what would it mean to her—if she were left alone? Images passed through his mind—the sights of the trenches—shattered and dying bodies. What was the soul?—had it really an independent life? Something there was in men—quite rough and common men—something revealed by war and the sufferings of war—so splendid, so infinitely beyond anything he had ever dreamed of in ordinary life, that to think of it roused in him a passion of hidden feeling—perhaps adoration—but vague and speechless—adoration of he knew not what. He did not speak easily of his feeling, even to his young wife, to whom marriage had so closely, so ineffably bound him. But as he lay on the grass looking up at her—smiling—obeying her command of silence, his thoughts ranged irrepressibly. Supposing he fell, and she lived on—years and years—to be an old woman? Old! Nelly? Impossible! He put his hand gently on the slender foot, and felt the pulsing life in it. 'Dearest!' she murmured at his touch, and their eyes met tenderly.
'I should be content—' he thought—'if we could just live this life out! I don't believe I should want another life. But to go—and leave her; to go—just at the beginning—before one knows anything—before one has finished anything—'
And again his eyes wandered from her to the suffusion of light and colour on the lake. 'How could anyone ever want anything better than this earth—this life—at its best—if only one were allowed a full and normal share of it!' And he thought again, almost with a leap of exasperation, of those dead and mangled men—out there—in France. Who was responsible—God?—or man? But man's will is—must be—something dependent—something included in God's will. If God really existed, and if He willed war, and sudden death—then there must be another life. Or else the power that devised the world was not a good, but an evil—at best, a blind one.
But while his young brain was racing through the old puzzles in the old ways, Nelly was thinking of something quite different. Her delicate small face kept breaking into little smiles with pensive intervals—till at last she broke out—
'Do you remember how I caught you—turning back to look after us—just here—just about here? You had passed that thorn tree—'
He came back to love-making with delight.
'"Caught me!" I like that! As if you weren't looking back too! How else did you know anything about me?'
He had taken his seat beside her on the rock, and her curly black head was nestling against his shoulder. There was no one on the mountain path, no one on the lake. Occasionally from the main road on the opposite shore there was a passing sound of wheels. Otherwise the world was theirs—its abysses of shadow, its 'majesties of light.'
She laughed joyously, not attempting to contradict him. It was on this very path, just two months before the war, that they had first seen each other. She with her father and Bridget were staying at Mrs. Weston's lodgings, because she, Nelly, had had influenza, and the doctor had sent her away for a change. They knew the Lakes well already, as is the way of Manchester folk. Their father, a hard-worked, and often melancholy man, had delighted in them, summer and winter, and his two girls had trudged about the fells with him year after year, and wanted nothing different or better. At least, Nelly had always been content. Bridget had grumbled often, and proposed Blackpool, or Llandudno, or Eastbourne for a change. But their father did not like 'crowds.' They came to the Lakes always before or after the regular season. Mr. Cookson hated the concourse of motorists in August, and never would use one himself. Not even when they went from Ambleside to Keswick. They must always walk, or go by the horse-coach.