Beyond his knowledge of his mutilation he remained faint and isolated in a cold, unchanging state. His being had become abstract and immutable. He sat there isolated, pure, abstract, in a state of supreme logical clarity. This he was now, a cold, clear abstraction. And as such he was going to judge. The outcome should be a pure, eternal, logical judgment: whether he should live or die. He examined his thought of his wife, and waited to see whether he should move to her. He waited still. Then his faintly beating heart died. The decision was no. He had no relation there. He fell away towards death. But still the tribunal was not closed. There were the children. He thought of them and saw them. But the thought of them did not stir the impulse back to life. He thought of them, but the thought of them left him cold and clear and abstract; they remained remote, away in life. And still he waited. Was it, then, finally decided? And out of the cold silence came the knowledge. It was decided he remained beyond, clear and untouched, in death.
In this supreme and transcendent state he remained motionless, knowing neither pain nor trouble, but only the extreme suspension of passing away.
Till the horrible sickness of dissolution came back, the overwhelming cold agony of dissolution.
As he lay in this cold, sweating anguish of dissolution, something again startled his consciousness, and, in a clear, abstract movement, he sat up. He was now no longer a man, but a disembodied, clear abstraction.
He saw two Germans who had ridden up, dismount by the body of the lieutenant.
“Kaput?”
“Jawohl!”
In a transcendent state of consciousness he lay and looked. They were turning over the body of the lieutenant. He saw the muscles of their shoulders as they moved their arms.
Clearly, in a calm, remote transcendence, he reached for his revolver. A man had ridden past him up the bank. He knew, but he was as if isolated from everything in this distinct, fine will of his own. He lay and took careful, supreme, almost absolute aim. One of the Germans started up, but the body of the other, who was bending over the dead lieutenant, pitched forward and collapsed, writhing. It was inevitable. A fine, transcendent spirituality was on the face of the Englishman, a white gleam. The other German, with a curious, almost ludicrous bustling movement had got out his revolver and was running forwards, when he saw the wounded, subtle Englishman luminous with an abstract smile on his face. At the same instant two bullets entered his body, one in the breast, and one in the belly. The body stumbled forward with a rattling, choking, coughing noise, the revolver went off in the air, the body fell on to its knees. The Englishman, still luminous and clear, fired at the dropped head. The bullet broke the neck.
Another German had ridden up, and was reining his horse in terror. The Englishman aimed at the red, sweating face. The body started with horror and began slipping out of the saddle, a bullet through its brain.
At the same moment the Englishman felt a sharp blow, and knew he was hit. But it was immaterial. The man above was firing at him. He turned round with difficulty as he lay. But he was struck again, and a sort of paralysis came over him. He saw the red face of a German with blue, staring eyes coming upon him, and he knew a knife was striking him. For one moment he felt the searing of steel, another final agony of suffocating darkness.
The German cut and mutilated the face of the dead man as if he must obliterate it. He slashed it across, as if it must not be a face any more; it must be removed. For he could not bear the clear, abstract look of the other’s face, its almost ghoulish, slight smile, faint but so terrible in its suggestion, that the German was mad, and ran up the road when he found himself alone.
The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter
“Well, Mabel, and what are you going to do with yourself?” asked Joe, with foolish flippancy. He felt quite safe himself. Without listening for an answer, he turned aside, worked a grain of tobacco to the tip of his tongue, and spat it out. He did not care about anything, since he felt safe himself.
The three brothers and the sister sat round the desolate breakfast-table, attempting some sort of desultory consultation. The morning’s post had given the final tap to the family fortunes, and all was over. The dreary dining-room itself, with its heavy mahogany furniture, looked as if it were waiting to be done away with.
But the consultation amounted to nothing. There was a strange air of ineffectuality about the three men, as they sprawled at table, smoking and reflecting vaguely on their own condition. The girl was alone, a rather short, sullen-looking young woman of twenty-seven. She did not share the same life as her brothers. She would have been good-looking, save for the impassive fixity of her face, “bull-dog,” as her brothers called it.
There was a confused tramping of horses’ feet outside. The three men all sprawled round in their chairs, to watch. Beyond the dark holly-bushes that separated the strip of lawn from the high road, they could see a cavalcade of shire horses swinging out of their own yard, being taken for exercise. This was the last time. These were the last horses that would go through their hands. The young men watched with critical, callous look. They were all frightened at the collapse of their lives, and the sense of disaster in which they were involved left them no inner freedom.
Yet they were three fine, well-set fellows enough. Joe, the eldest, was a man of thirty-three, broad and handsome in a hot, flushed way. His face was red, he twisted his black moustache over a thick finger, his eyes were shallow and restless. He had a sensual way of uncovering his teeth when he laughed, and his bearing was stupid. Now he watched the horses with a glazed look of helplessness in his eyes, a certain stupor of downfall.
The great draught-horses swung past. They were tied head to tail, four of them, and they heaved along to where a lane branched off from the high road, planting their great hoofs floutingly in the fine black mud, swinging their great rounded haunches sumptuously, and trotting a few sudden steps as they were led into the lane, round the corner. Every movement showed a massive, slumbrous strength, and a stupidity which held them in subjection. The groom at the head looked back, jerking the leading rope. And the cavalcade moved out of sight up the lane, the tail of the last horse, bobbed up tight and stiff, held out taut from the swinging great haunches as they rocked behind the hedges in a motion like sleep.
Joe watched with glazed, hopeless eyes. The horses were almost like his own body to him. He felt he was done for now. Luckily he was engaged to a woman as old as himself, and therefore her father, who was steward of a neighbouring estate, would provide him with a job. He would marry and go into harness. His life was over, he would be a subject animal now.
He turned uneasily aside, the retreating steps of the horses echoing in his ears. Then, with foolish restlessness, he reached for the scraps of bacon-rind from the plates, and, making a faint whistling sound, flung them to the terrier that lay against the fender. He watched the dog swallow them, and waited till the creature looked into his eyes. Then a faint grin came on his face, and in a high, foolish voice he said:
“You won’t get much more bacon, shall you, you little b——?”
The dog faintly and dismally wagged its tail, then lowered its haunches, circled round, and lay down again.
There was another helpless silence at the table. Joe sprawled uneasily in his seat, not willing to go till the family conclave was dissolved. Fred Henry, the second brother, was erect, clean-limbed, alert. He had watched the passing of the horses with more sang-froid. If he was an animal, like Joe, he was an animal which controls, not one which is controlled. He was master of any horse, and he carried himself with a well-tempered air of mastery. But he was not master of the situations of life. He pushed his coarse brown moustache upwards, off his lip, and glanced irritably at his sister, who sat impassive and inscrutable.
“You’ll go and stop with Lucy for a bit, shan’t you?” he asked. The girl did not answer.
“I don’t see what else you can do,” persisted Fred Henry.
“Go as a skivvy,” Joe interpolated laconically.
&nbs
p; The girl did not move a muscle.
“If I was her, I should go in for training for a nurse,” said Malcolm, the youngest of them all. He was the baby of the family, a young man of twenty-two, with a fresh, jaunty museau.
But Mabel did not take any notice of him. They had talked at her and round her for so many years, that she hardly heard them at all.
The marble clock on the mantelpiece softly chimed the half-hour, the dog rose uneasily from the hearthrug and looked at the party at the breakfast-table. But still they sat on in ineffectual conclave.
“Oh all right,” said Joe suddenly, à propos of nothing. “I’ll get a move on.”
He pushed back his chair, straddled his knees with a downward jerk, to get them free, in horsey fashion, and went to the fire. Still he did not go out of the room, he was curious to know what the others would do or say. He began to charge his pipe, looking down at the dog and saying, in a high, affected voice:
“Going wi’ me? Going wi’ me are ter? Tha’rt goin’ further than tha counts on just now, dost hear?”
The dog faintly wagged its tail, the man stuck out his jaw and covered his pipe with his hands, and puffed intently, losing himself in the tobacco, looking down all the while at the dog, with an absent brown eye. The dog looked up at him in mournful distrust. Joe stood with his knees stuck out, in real horsey fashion.
“Have you had a letter from Lucy?” Fred Henry asked of his sister.
“Last week,” came the neutral reply.
“And what does she say?”
There was no answer.
“Does she ask you to go and stop there?” persisted Fred Henry.
“She says I can if I like.”
“Well, then, you’d better. Tell her you’ll come on Monday.”
This was received in silence.
“That’s what you’ll do then, is it?” said Fred Henry, in some exasperation.
But she made no answer. There was a silence of futility and irritation in the room. Malcolm grinned fatuously.
“You’ll have to make up your mind between now and next Wednesday,” said Joe loudly, “or else find yourself lodgings on the kerbstone.”
The face of the young woman darkened, but she sat on immutable.
“Here’s Jack Fergusson!” exclaimed Malcolm, who was looking aimlessly out of the window.
“Where?” exclaimed Joe loudly.
“Just gone past.”
“Coming in?”
Malcolm craned his neck to see the gate.
“Yes,” he said.
There was a silence. Mabel sat on like one condemned, at the head of the table. Then a whistle was heard from the kitchen. The dog got up and barked sharply. Joe opened the door and shouted:
“Come on.”
After a moment, a young man entered. He was muffled up in overcoat and a purple woollen scarf, and his tweed cap, which he did not remove, was pulled down on his head. He was of medium height, his face was rather long and pale, his eyes looked tired.
“Hallo, Jack! Well, Jack!” exclaimed Malcolm and Joe. Fred Henry merely said “Jack!”
“What’s doing?” asked the newcomer, evidently addressing Fred Henry.
“Same. We’ve got to be out by Wednesday.—Got a cold?”
“I have—got it bad, too.”
“Why don’t you stop in?”
“Me stop in? When I can’t stand on my legs, perhaps I shall have a chance.” The young man spoke huskily. He had a slight Scotch accent.
“It’s a knock-out, isn’t it,” said Joe boisterously, “if a doctor goes round croaking with a cold. Looks bad for the patients, doesn’t it?”
The young doctor looked at him slowly.
“Anything the matter with you, then?” he asked sarcastically.
“Not as I know of. Damn your eyes, I hope not. Why?”
“I thought you were very concerned about the patients, wondered if you might be one yourself.”
“Damn it, no, I’ve never been patient to no flaming doctor, and hope I never shall be,” returned Joe.
At this point Mabel rose from the table, and they all seemed to become aware of her existence. She began putting the dishes together. The young doctor looked at her, but did not address her. He had not greeted her. She went out of the room with the tray, her face impassive and unchanged.
“When are you off then, all of you?” asked the doctor.
“I’m catching the eleven-forty,” replied Malcolm. “Are you goin’ down wi’ th’ trap, Joe?”
“Yes, you young b——, I’ve told you I’m going down wi’ th’ trap, haven’t I?”
“We’d better be getting her in then.—So long, Jack, if I don’t see you before I go,” said Malcolm, shaking hands.
He went out, followed by Joe, who seemed to have his tail between his legs.
“Well, this is the devil’s own,” exclaimed the doctor when he was left alone with Fred Henry. “Going before Wednesday, are you?”
“That’s the orders,” replied the other.
“Where, to Northampton?”
“That’s it.”
“The devil!” exclaimed Fergusson with quiet chagrin.
And there was silence between the two.
“All settled up, are you?” asked Fergusson.
“About.”
There was another pause.
“Well, I shall miss yer, Freddy boy,” said the young doctor.
“And I shall miss thee, Jack,” returned the other.
“Miss you like Hell,” mused the doctor.
Fred Henry turned aside. There was nothing to say. Mabel came in again, to finish clearing the table.
“What are you going to do then, Miss Pervin?” asked Fergusson. “Going to your sister’s, are you?”
Mabel looked at him with her steady, dangerous eyes, that always made him uncomfortable, unsettling his superficial ease.
“No,” she said.
“Well, what in the name of fortune are you going to do? Say what you mean to do,” cried Fred Henry with futile intensity.
But she only averted her head and continued her work. She folded the white tablecloth, and put on the chenille cloth.
“The sulkiest bitch that ever trod!” muttered her brother.
But she finished her task with perfectly impassive face, the young doctor watching her interestedly all the while. Then she went out.
Fred Henry stared after her, clenching his lips, his blue eyes fixing in sharp antagonism, as he made a grimace of sour exasperation.
“You could bray her into bits, and that’s all you’d get out of her,” he said in a small, narrowed tone.
The doctor smiled faintly.
“What’s she going to do then?” he asked.
“Strike me if I know!” returned the other.
There was a pause. Then the doctor stirred.
“I’ll be seeing you to-night, shall I?” he said to his friend.
“Ay—where’s it to be? Are we going over to Jessdale?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got such a cold on me. I’ll come round to the Moon and Stars, anyway.”
“Let Lizzie and May miss their night for once, eh?”
“That’s it—if I feel as I do now.”
“All’s one——”
The two young men went through the passage and down to the back door together. The house was large, but it was servantless now, and desolate. At the back was a small bricked house-yard, and beyond that a big square, gravelled fine and red, and having stables on two sides. Sloping, dank, winter-dark fields stretched away on the open sides.
But the stables were empty. Joseph Pervin, the father of the family, had been a man of no education, who had become a fairly large horse-dealer. The stables had been full of horses, there was a great turmoil and come-and-go of horses and of dealers and grooms. Then the kitchen was full of servants. But of late things had declined. The old man had married a second time, to retrieve his fortunes. Now he was dead and everything was gone to the dogs, there
was nothing but debt and threatening.
For months Mabel had been servantless in the big house, keeping the home together in penury for her ineffectual brothers. She had kept house for ten years. But previously it was with unstinted means. Then, however brutal and coarse everything was, the sense of money had kept her proud, confident. The men might be foul-mouthed, the women in the kitchen might have bad reputations, her brothers might have illegitimate children. But so long as there was money, the girl felt herself established, and brutally proud, reserved.
No company came to the house, save dealers and coarse men. Mabel had no associates of her own sex, after her sister went away. But she did not mind. She went regularly to church, she attended to her father. And she lived in the memory of her mother, who had died when she was fourteen, and whom she had loved. She had loved her father too, in a different way, depending upon him, and feeling secure in him, until at the age of fifty-four he married again. And then she had set hard against him. Now he had died and left them all hopelessly in debt.
She had suffered badly during the period of poverty. Nothing, however, could shake the curious sullen, animal pride that dominated each member of the family. Now, for Mabel, the end had come. Still she would not cast about her. She would follow her own way just the same. She would always hold the keys of her own situation. Mindless and persistent, she endured from day to day. Why should she think? Why should she answer anybody? It was enough that this was the end, and there was no way out. She need not pass any more darkly along the main street of the small town, avoiding every eye. She need not demean herself any more, going into the shops and buying the cheapest food. This was at an end. She thought of nobody, not even of herself. Mindless and persistent, she seemed in a sort of ecstasy to be coming nearer to her fulfilment, her own glorification, approaching her dead mother, who was glorified.
In the afternoon she took a little bag, with shears and sponge and a small scrubbing brush, and went out. It was a grey, wintry day, with saddened, dark-green fields and an atmosphere blackened by the smoke of foundries not far off. She went quickly, darkly along the causeway, heeding nobody, through the town to the churchyard.
Selected Stories Page 22