At Boulogne he sent a telegram to Elizabeth. The R.T.O. told him to leave all his kit on the quay, and to take only his personal belongings. He slipped off his equipment and laid his rifle beside his dinted helmet, feeling as if he were carrying out some strange valedictory rite. He went on board ship, holding his razor, soap, tooth-brush, comb, and some letters, wrapped in a clean khaki handkerchief. He managed to scrounge a haversack and strap on board.
The troop train from Folkestone to London was filled with leave men and others returned from France. As the train puffed up to the junction, the men crowded to the windows. Girls and women walking in the parallel street, standing in the doorways, leaning out the window, waved pocket-handkerchiefs, cheered shrilly, and threw them kisses. The excited men waved and shouted to them. Winterbourne was amazed at the beauty, the almost angelic beauty, of women. He had not seen a woman for seven months.
It was dark when they got to Victoria, but the station was brilliantly lighted. A long barrier separated a crowd from the soldiers, who thronged out at one end. Here and there a woman threw her arms about the neck of a soldier in a close embrace which at least at that moment was sincere. The women’s shoulders trembled with their sobs; the men stood very still, holding them close a moment, and then drew them away. At once the women made an effort and seemed gay and unconcerned.
Many of the men were proceeding elsewhere, and were not met.
Winterbourne saw Elizabeth standing, in a wide-brimmed hat, at the end of the barrier. Again he was amazed at the beauty of women. Could it be that he knew, that he had dared to touch, so beautiful a creature? She looked so slender, so young, so exquisite. And so elegant. He was intimidated, and hung back in the crowd of passing soldiers, watching her. She was scanning the faces as they passed; twice she looked at him, and looked away. He made his way through the throng towards her. She looked at him again carefully, and once more began scanning the passing faces. He walked straight up to her and held out his hands:
“Elizabeth!”
She started violently, stared at him, and then kissed him with the barrier between them:
“Why, George! How you’ve altered! I didn’t recognize you!”
12
WINTERBOURNE had a fortnight’s leave before reporting to his Regimental Depot. He came in for two or three air raids, and lay awake listening to the familiar bark of Archies. The bombs crashed heavily. It was very mild – all over in half an hour. Still, the raids affected him unpleasantly; he had not expected them.
He spent his first morning wandering about London by himself. He was still amazed at the beauty of women, and was afraid they would be offended by his staring at them. Prostitutes twice spoke to him, offering him “Oriental attractions”. He saluted them, and passed on. The second girl muttered insults, which he scarcely heard. There seemed to be a great many more prostitutes in London.
The street paving was badly worn, but looked marvellously smooth and kempt to Winterbourne, accustomed to roads worn into deep ruts and reft with shell-holes. He was charmed to see so many houses – all unbroken. And buses going up and down. And people carrying umbrellas – of course, people had umbrellas. There was khaki everywhere. Every third man was a soldier. He passed some American marines, the advance-guard of the great armies being prepared across the Atlantic. They had wide shoulders and narrow hips, strong-looking men; each of them had picked up a girl. They walked in London with the same proprietary swagger that the English used in France.
A military policeman stopped and roughly asked him what he was doing. Winterbourne produced his pass.
“Sorry; thought you was a deserter, old man. Don’t go out without yer pass.”
The second night after his arrival Elizabeth took him to a Soho restaurant to dine with some of her friends. Fanny was not there, but the party included Mr. Upjohn, Mr. Waldo Tubbe, and Reggie Burnside. There were several people Winterbourne had never met, including a man who had made a great hit by translating Armenian poetry – from the French versions of Archag Tchobanian. He was extremely intellectual and weary in manner, and took Winterbourne’s hand in a very limp way, turning his head aside with an air of elegant contempt as he did so.
Winterbourne sat very silent through the meal, nervously rolling bread pills. He was amazed to find how remote he felt, how completely he had nothing to say. They talked about various topics he didn’t quite follow, and titteringly gossiped about people he didn’t know. Elizabeth got on wonderfully, chattered with every one, laughed, and was a great success. He felt very uncomfortable, like a death’s-head at a feast. He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the restaurant mirrors, and thought he looked ludicrously solemn and distressed.
Over coffee they shifted seats, and one or two people came and talked to him. Mr. Upjohn dropped clumsily into the next chair, thrust out his chin, and coughed.
“Are you back in London for good now?”
“No. I’ve a fortnight’s leave, and then go to an Officers’ Training Corps.”
“And then will you be in London?”
“No; I shall have to go back to France again.” Mr. Upjohn irritatedly clucked his tongue – tch, tch!
“I mildly supposed you’d finished soldiering. You look most grotesque in those clothes.”
“Yes, but they’re practical, you know.”
“What I mean to say is that the most important thing is that the processes of civilization shouldn’t be interrupted by all this war business.”
“I quite agree. I – ”
“What I mean to say is, if you get time, come round to my studio and have a look at my new pictures. Are you still writing for periodicals?”
Winterbourne smiled.
“No. I’ve been rather busy, you know, and in the trenches one –”
“What I mean to say is, I’d like you to do an article on my Latest Development.”
“Suprematism?”
“Good Lord, NO! I finished with that long ago. How extraordinarily ignorant you are, Winterbourne! No, no. I’m working at Concavism now. It’s by far the greatest contribution that’s been made to twentieth-century civilization. What I mean is…”
Winterbourne ceased to listen and drank off a full glass of wine. Why hadn’t Evans written to him? Died of the effects of gas, probably. He beckoned to the waiter.
“Bring me another bottle of wine.”
“Yessir.”
“George!” came Elizabeth’s voice, warning and slightly reproving. “Don’t drink too much!”
He made no answer, but sat looking heavily at his coffee-cup. Blast her. Blast Upjohn. Blast the lot of them. He drank off another glass of wine, and felt the singing dazzle of intoxication, its comforting oblivion, stealing into him. Blast them.
Mr. Upjohn grew tired of improving the mind of a cretin who hadn’t even the wits to listen to him, and slid away. Presently Mr. Waldo Tubbe took his place.
“Well, my dear Winterbourne, I am very happy to see you again, looking so well. The military life has set you up splendidly. And Mrs. Winterbourne tells me that at last you have received a commission. I congratulate you – better late than never.”
“Thanks. But I may not get it, you know. I’ve got to pass the training-school.”
“Oh, that’ll do you a world of good, a world of good.”
“I hope so.”
“And how did you spend your leisure in France – still reading and painting?”
Winterbourne gave a little hard laugh.
“No, mostly lying about, sleeping.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But, you know, if you will forgive my saying so, I always doubted whether your Vocation were really towards the arts. I felt you were more fitted for an open-air life. Of course, you’re doing splendid work now, splendid. The Empire needs every man. When you come back after the Victory, as I trust you will return safe and sound, why don’t you take up life in one of our colonies, Australia or Canada? There’s a great opening for men there.”
Winterbourne laughed agai
n.
“Wait till I get back, and then we’ll see. Have a glass of wine?”
“No-oeh, thank you, no-oeh. By the way, what is that red ribbon on your arm? Vaccination?”
“No; company runner.”
“A company runner? What is that? Not runner away, I hope?”
And Mr. Tubbe laughed silently, nodding his head up and down in appreciation of his jest. Winterbourne did not smile.
“Well, it might be under some circumstances, if you knew which way to run.”
“Oh, but our men are so splendid, so splendid, so unlike the Germans, you know. Haven’t you found the Germans mean-spirited? They have to be chained to their machine-guns, you know.”
“I hadn’t observed it. In fact, they’re fighting with wonderful courage and persistence. It’s not much of a compliment to our men to suggest otherwise, is it? We haven’t managed to shift ‘em far yet.”
“Ah! but you must not allow your own labours to distort your perspective. The Navy is the important arm in the War; that and the marvellous home organization, of which you, of course, can know nothing.”
“Of course, but still…”
Mr. Tubbe rose to move away.
“Delighted to have seen you, my dear Winterbourne. And thank you for all your interesting news from the Front. Most stimulating. Most stimulating.”
Winterbourne signed to his wife to go, but she ignored the signal, and went on talking earnestly and attentively with Reggie Burnside. He drank another glass of wine, and stretched his legs. His heavy hobnailed boots came in contact with the shins of the man opposite.
“Sorry. Hope I didn’t hurt you. Sorry to be so clumsy.”
“Oh, not at all, nothing, nothing,” said the man, rubbing his bruised shin with a look of furious anguish. Elizabeth frowned at Winterbourne, and leaned across to get the bottle. He grabbed it first, poured himself another glass, and then gave it to her. She looked angry at his rudeness. He felt pleasantly drunk, and cared not a damn for any one.
Coming home in the taxi she reproved him with gentle dignity for drinking too much.
“Remember, dear, you’re not with a lot of rough soldiers now. And, please forgive me for mentioning it, but your hands and fingers are terribly dirty – did you forget to wash them? And you were rather rude to everybody.”
He was silent, staring listlessly out of the taxi-cab window. She sighed, and slightly shrugged her shoulders. They did not sleep together that night.
Next morning at breakfast they were both preoccupied and silent. Suddenly George emerged from his reverie.
“I say, what’s happened to Fanny? She’s not out of town, is she?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Why wasn’t she at dinner with us last night?”
“I didn’t ask her.”
“You didn’t ask her! Why ever not?”
Elizabeth looked annoyed at the question, but tried to pass it off lightly.
“I don’t see much of her now – Fanny’s so popular, you know.”
“But why don’t you see her?” Winterbourne pursued clumsily. “Is anything wrong?”
“I don’t see her because I don’t choose to,” replied Elizabeth tartly and decisively.
He made no reply. So, owing to him there was fixed enmity between Fanny and Elizabeth! His mood of depression deepened, and he went to his room. He picked a book from the shelves at random and opened it – De Quincey’s Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. He had entirely forgotten the existence of that piece of macabre irony, and gazed stupidly at the large-type title. Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. How damned appropriate! He put it down and began to look over his painting materials. Elizabeth had taken his sketching-blocks and paper and all his unused canvases except one. The tubes of paint had gone hard and dry, and his palette was covered with shrunken hard blobs of paint just as he had left it fifteen months before. He carefully cleaned it, as if he might be sent before his Company officer on the charge of having a dirty palette.
He turned up some of his old sketches and looked through them. Could it be that he had composed them? They were undoubtedly signed “G. Winterbourne”. He looked at them critically, and then slowly tore them up, threw them in the empty fire-grate, struck a match and set fire to them. He watched the paper curl up under the creeping flame, glow dull red, and shrink to black fragile ash. Numbers of his canvases were stacked in little neat piles against the wall. He ran through them rapidly, letting them fall back into place as if they had been cards. He paused when he came upon a forgotten portrait of himself. Had he painted that? Yes, it was signed with his name. Now, when and where had he done it? He held the small canvas in his hands, gazing intently at it with a prodigious effort of memory, but simply could not remember anything about it. The picture was undated, and he could not even remember in which year he had done it. He deliberately put his foot through it, tore away the strips of canvas from the frame and burned them. It was the only portrait of him in existence, since he had always refused to be photographed.
In the line they had been forbidden to keep diaries or to make sketches, since either might be of use to the enemy if they got possession of them. He shut his eyes. In a flash he saw vividly the ruined village, the road leading to M—, the broken desecrated ground, the long slag-hill, and heard the “claaang” of the heavies dropping reverberantly into M—. He went to Elizabeth’s room to get a sheet of paper and a soft pencil to make a sketch of the scene. She had gone out. As he rummaged at her table, he turned over and could not help seeing the first lines of a letter in a handwriting unknown to him. The date was that of the day on which he had returned to England, and the words he could not help seeing were: “DARLING, – What a bore, as you say! Never mind, the visitation can’t last long, and…” Winterbourne hastily covered the letter up to avoid reading any more.
He went back to his room with paper and pencil and began to sketch. He was astonished to find that his hand, once as steady as the table itself, shook very slightly but perceptibly. The drink last night, or shell-shock? He persisted with his sketch, but the whole thing went wrong. He got tired of blocking lines in and rubbing out. And yet that scene existed so vividly in his memory, and he could see exactly how it could be formal-into an effective pattern. But his hand and brain failed him-he had even forgotten how to draw rapidly and accurately.
He dropped the pencil and rubber on the half-erased sketch and went back to Elizabeth’s room. She was still out. The room was very quiet and sunny. The old orange-striped curtains had gone and were replaced by long, ample curtains of thick green serge, to comply with the regulations about lights. There were summer flowers in the large blue bowl, and fruit on the beautiful Spanish plate. He remembered how the wasp had come through the window, like a tiny Fokker plane, almost exactly three years ago. To his surprise he felt a lump in his throat and tears coming to his eyes.
A church clock outside chimed three-quarters. He looked at his wrist-watch – a quarter to one. Better go somewhere and have lunch. He dropped into the first Lyons Restaurant he came to. The waitress asked if he would like cold corned beef – thanks, he’d had enough bully beef for the time being. After lunch, he rang up Fanny’s flat, but got no reply. He walked in her direction, strolling, to give her time to return home. She was not in. He scribbled a note, asking her to meet him as soon as she could, and then took a bus back to Chelsea, lay down on his bed and fell asleep. Elizabeth came into the room about six and tiptoed out. At seven she woke him. He started up, fully awake at once, mechanically grabbing for his rifle.
“What’s up?”
Elizabeth was startled by this sudden leap awake, and he had unconsciously jostled her roughly as she bent over him.
“I’m so sorry. How you started! I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Oh, it’s all right. I wasn’t frightened – used to jumping up in a hurry, you know. What time is it?”
“Seven.”
“Good Lord! I wonder what made me sleep
that long!”
“I came to know if you’d dine with me and Reggie tonight.”
“Is he coming here afterwards?”
“Of course not.”
“I think I’ll have dinner with Fanny.”
“All right; just as you please.”
“Can I have the other key to the flat?” Elizabeth lied:
“I’m afraid it’s lost. But I’ll leave the door unlocked as I did today.”
“All right. Thanks.”
“Au revoir.
“Au revoir.”
Winterbourne washed, and worked desperately hard with a nailbrush to get out the dirt deeply and apparently ineradicably engrained in his roughened hands. He got a little more off, but his fingers were still striated with lines of dirt which made them look coarse and horrible. He rang Fanny up from a call-box.
“Hullo. That you, Fanny? George speaking.”
“Darling! How are you? When did you get back?”
“Two or three days ago. Didn’t you get my letter?” Fanny lied:
“I’ve been away, and only found it when I got back just now.”
“It doesn’t matter. Listen: will you dine with me tonight?”
“Darling, I’m so sorry, but I simply can’t. I’ve an appointment I simply must keep. Such a bore!”
Such a bore, as you say! Never mind; the visitation can’t last long, and “It doesn’t matter, darling. When can we meet?”
“Just a moment: let me look at my memorandum-book.”
A brief silence. He could hear a faint voice from another line crossing his: “My God! you say he’s killed! And he only went back last week!”
Death of a Hero Page 37