by Walter Owen
But the will is greater than the terrors that assault it, and Carl now shudderingly puts that crane’s foot to the ground and is off over the platform to the rails, then down upon the track with a smothered yelp for his leg, and then on to the inner fence that lies beyond, limping like a wounded bird, his hand stanching the river at his breast. But where his nest is in all that wild night of storm and agony he does not know - God only knows that. And, oh! it is enough to make a heart crack to see that fragment stagger there, with its backward glance and its totter, flying from man’s hard handiwork and flinty heart, hunted like a fox to the moor, and with that pitiful hop of a broken bird. Yet the foxes have their holes, and the birds of the air their nests, but for Carl’s head there seems no place of rest...
Now he is at the first fence, and pantingly he drags himself up and puts a leg over, for it is only a few wires high, his whole being a shriek that is smothered in his gaping throat. But when half over, a mad fancy whiffs through his sick brain, and at the sight of those pale figures lying forlorn on the platform yonder, he is back; and over each one he stoops, and patting the poor head, a twisted smile writhing his lips, he says softly, “Sleep, sleepy head, sleep,” and at the last one, after he has said this, he pauses, and like a wrestler in his memory he gropes, and then more softly he adds, “Mother will come to you soon” - his voice crooning - and he is off again with his limp and the load of his torture to the fence.
This time he gets over, not, however, without a fall, at which a boo-hoo of pain conquers and sprawls from his wry mouth. But Carl need-not have been afraid then that men would hear him and come, as he thought, to take him back to that catasta of the sheds behind; for the storm sheltered him, and man’s ears are hard too, like his heart. So only God heard him.
Presently he found the outer fence bar his way, and at that fence his poor heart sank entirely into shadow, for no man unaided might scale it; and he leaned against one of the posts of it, bitter, bitter, thinking that now surely was he undone and all his labour at nought.
But in a little he groped in the darkness and reached another post, and then to another he tottered; and after a long nightmare, in which those posts were commas, he saw the gate and the kennel where the sentry sat.
That night the sentry had drunk well of beer, having gained a wager with a comrade in which the stake was a day’s share, and having taken a turn outside the gate just lately, had come in when the first drops of the shower plashed, and now, huddled in his box, he snored; while the gate, with its lock turned indeed by his fuddled fingers, but clear of its hasp, swung to the wind’s breath, showing an inch of space between its iron edge and the post.
So the gate was open; and the guard slept; and Carl passed out.
III. Sepulture
The moor took him to its desolation and the winds and waters wrapped him.
Picking his way among the gorse bushes that dotted the moor’s face, he went his weary way, his face set towards the forest yonder three miles away; although he knew not whither he went, only that he left the sheds ever farther at his back.
No longer now fearful of a sound, he lets his sick brain say freely her whims and fancies at his mouth, and between his whimpers words come, nonsense for the most part, and echoes from those shelves where the mind stores her records and from which now at random she picks and ponders and drones now a passage and now peevishly is off on a new quest, scattering the dust.... And sometimes his head yaws in the wind like a sick ship, and from his slack lips comes a diddle of delirium and a teetering sound of idiocy that gathers its shadows in the house where his soul still lingers.
But soon with his gabble begin to mingle phrases, disjointed at first, but slowly fitting together; with sometimes here and there a ray that breaks and goes or a gleam of peace in which a star swims like a fisher’s boat with its light that rides the storm.
Sometimes, too, a sphery thought sails wonderfully athwart that turmoil of raving, a thought too big for the Carl that passed through the anguish of the mount and the horrors of the charnel house, a glistering orb that sheds calm light upon his suffering soul, like words which they who watch by madmen’s beds sometimes hear and wonder at, not understanding, but knowing that here no madness speaks.
For a sane man’s mind is bounded; and in the penthouse of the brain the soul sets her asylum of sanity and the sanctuary of her self-contemplation that like all else must grow from a little room to big; but a madman’s head is a ruined house with walls agape and riven roof through which looms the abyss wherein the planets swing. Not empty are those halls then, nor entirely desolate that Balclutha of the soul; for the soul in her roaming looks in often, visiting the ruined home she loved; and drops sometimes there a flower gathered on the far shores she knows or whispers there sweet secrets of other whens and wheres; so that those who linger by the door may hear at times, amid the fall of crumbling roof beams and the flap of swaying shutters, some echo of eternal verities or feel above the odour of rank weeds and rotten grass the subtle perfume of those unknown blooms.
So Carl diddles and droons his way over the moor with that super-sanity of the insane insistently asserting its note, and thus as he goes he murmurs... “diddle, diddle, diddle.... Oh, that was a cruel rip to give one... and struck in anger. But anger is better than hate, for God can be angry, but He would not hate... no, not even me… diddle, diddle, diddle. And man, sure, has a long way to travel, like me over this moor; and there are storms and blacknesses enough to meet him. But the thing to say is: deeper yet, deeper yet, and still in the end a deeper deep; and in that deep there is a stair starts whose end... diddle, diddle, diddle... what end is that?... Diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow... yes, the end, oh, that’s good now, and Jacob knew it after that long night of his... so maybe for me too there is a stair at the end of this, maybe even for me too….”
And when later on he stumbled and had a fall, he saw some wild thing run from his scramble, and called to it “pussy, pussy,” his mind busy with some memory of firesides; but it did not come, and his tears drizzled from his chin, and he stood, saying, “Even the beasts fly from me; and who will take me in then and comfort me?” But his home, had he known it, was not far then nor was his comforter unmindful.
Then, seeing the moon through a rift of the storm - which by now was beginning to break up and clear - cruising like a swan in her pool of gloom, he said, “There you go, there you go, you child bereft and far from home; well may you muse upon this cruising human-home, for she is heavy laden... and a tear might well fall some night from you; for her freight of care and heartache is past all cargomark, Father, Thou knowest”... and again a spasm shook him at that “Father,” and he diddled.
And farther on he stumbled over a spade with a broken handle that some workman had left lying there at the time those sheds were built; and listlessly, after gazing on it some time, he took it up and carried it with him, murmuring, “Here is a spade, Carl; and here is Carl, spade; but whether Carl has found the spade, or the spade Carl, neither of them knows; for this spade has a broken handle and is thrown out on the moor; and I too am broken-handled, and thrown out too, so that I am thought useless by all men, save it be to dig my own grave... diddle, diddle.... So we may as well go together, spade, for none will have us, not even God; for if I be without a handle, how may He take me up?”... And suddenly his foot caught in a stone and he fell upon his face.
As he lay, he lost his spade and groped, and for a moment had a pang of loneliness at the loss of it; but presently found it a little way from him as he lay, and felt immediately better of that pang and followed his musing vacantly, his lips moving as of their own will.
“But it seems I was wrong now, for here is nothing but a broken spade; but when I lost it I was forlorn, and finding it was happy again; so that even a broken spade is some use it seems, if one love it. And even when it is utterly broken up and mouldered I suppose it is not utterly destroyed, for that I am sure of, but its substance must pass into
other spades, or into other and finer tools. But look now; some one planned the spade before it was made, and took iron and wood and put his plan in them, and clothed his plan in spade; but the plan was in the mind, and a man’s thoughts now do not rot. A thought is not a thing and man can’t get at it to rot it or to break it. So you see, Carl, the spade is good and need not be afraid”... And at that he rose again, and as he went hopping on amid the gorse, his brows wrinkled and his eye puzzled, as with a great thought that would not be tamed to speech.
Once as he went he saw suddenly a dark form stretch out before him on the ground like a great evil thing that lay in wait to betray his feet, and he started, all his fear swift-turned on him and his heart sinking, for that menace was sudden, and awful seemed that form. Yet saying, “What cannot harm spade surely cannot harm me,” he made a step and found that-it was his shadow, cast by a glare that had waked behind him on the moor.
That thought with which he wrestled was very near then and his soul was a Bethesda pool which it seemed an angel’s wings almost stirred, but at the light he turned, thinking day came then; and again the pool waited.
Day was not yet, and it was an evil light that he saw far away whence he had come. The lantern he had dropped in his flight down the shed had set its flame’s contagion firm in that sinful house, before any of its minions had waked to its menace in that wild and roaring night, and now the conflagration was well under way, lighting up the moor with the glare of its destruction.
Great billows of smoke, heavy and greasy as with the evil that had dwelt there, rolled far away towards the river before the wind that had now died to a breeze, and tongues of deep orange flame shot up, from which sparks whirled upwards. Now and then great flots of fire, detached, soared a moment, and flickered and went out.
The rain had ceased, the sky was clearing and the murmur of the flame came out to Carl dimly, he being now about two miles away from the sheds and about a mile from the road yonder.
He stood in an irregular circle of gorse bushes and watched that far outroar of red fury growing and the sparks and flame-flots fly their brief flight and go.... “As the sparks fly...” he murmured. Then suddenly he was aware that even here the glare reached, showing him dimly, and, still faithless in man’s hard heart and the hand that seemed always against him, he sank, thinking he would surely be discovered; “and goodness knows,” he thought, “what new thing they will do to me if that happens.”
After a little he looked out and saw the fire grow and black figures run about the foot of the furnace; and presently, darkling, with a grim resolve in his eye, he took the spade and began to dig. And as he dug in the face of the moor, he spoke to himself:
“If I stay here I am caught by those devils yonder, and go farther I cannot, God knows; for here I am foundered at the last and my life must be saved or spent in this spot, for I am not a bird though I hop like one”… And a twisted smile broke on his lips to a sob, he being then truly near his end and his flesh but a living wince in which the soul lingered. And now as he dug he sobbed:
“God, God - if you do see and it is not an untruth - look,I have borne my part, surely; nevertheless, what more of my share may be to come I'll bear - I’ll bear... But a man is not a camel, now... not a camel... and it is time to make an end. Here, then, I will dig my grave, and I will be buried in the earth; for in her is sweetness and good rest and comfort…” And he went on digging with his broken spade.
Presently, after half an hour’s labour, crouching there, during which his breast gaped again, and drops of blood fell on the spadefuls he turned, he had carved a shallow ditch the length of a man, two feet across and about a foot and a half deep, but then could do no more, feeling death near; and he said:
“I will lay me down in this grave that I have made and here will I compose myself to sleep, for my limbs are aweary, aweary, and my heart heavy laden; and to no farther bourne came all the tribes of earth, no, and to no better rest; for truly man is dust and darkness the portion of his days.”
But before he lay down in the grave he had another memory and he knelt there in his pain and nakedness to pray. And when he had knelt to pray he would have said the Lord’s Prayer, for that seemed to him a good prayer; but he found he had forgotten it, and he could only sob… and after a little he said “Mother... mother”… and that comforted him, for God had made him as a little child again.
He took the spade and lay in the grave, and closing his eyes he said softly, “This surely is the end of my pain and I can die and be at rest for ever”... and after a little… “But if there is a God He will raise me.” And he slept.
IV. Resurrection
In a swift, easy-rolling car two men sped along a road that night, leaving ever farther behind them the snake-line where the Beast raged and in which Hill 50 was a boil of torment.
Before and behind the car went two others, each keeping its distance from the middle car and each with four soldiers on board.
Of the two men in the car, one was a burly figure dressed in a Marshal's uniform under a grey cloak. His face was massive and heavy-jowled, a grim face with an eye to be feared, for pity was not in it.
The other was a slighter man, whose face was almost totally hidden by the turned-up collar of his coat, above which, in the shadow of his helmet, his eyes gleamed with an insolent stare. His loose cloak, thrown open, showed a glitter here and there on the uniform beneath, for they had been to a review of raw troops, these two, where for once in a while such gewgaws had their use to gild the bitter pill of death.
Silence hung in the car between those two and with gloomy looks their eyes roved through the windows as they sped through the countryside, deserted and still in the slowly waking grey of a storm-washed dawn, it being now about four in the morning.
The rain of the night had ceased to fall and the skies were clearing, the clouds rolling away horizonwards in a jostling tumult of murky billows; and a fresh wind blew, with a promise in it of a glorious day to be. The wheels of the car splashed now and then through pools of rain water.
The figures in the car sat motionless, each communing with his mind’s images and getting little comfort there, it might be seen. The man with the shadowed face broke the silence. “So they fight,” he said.
The other man turned on him a dour look, something between respect and contempt. “So,” he said, “they fight. But what can they do? A handful!” He flicked his coat sleeve. He was still for a space, then spoke again, his dour smile twitching his face. “War broods,” he said, “and all her eggs are not hatched yet.”
The slight man looked at him sideways. “Nor laid,” he said between closed teeth and laughed loudly at his own wit.
The car at that moment swerved round a bend of the road, which followed here the line of a forest’s edge. In front and on one side of the car they saw a wide expanse of moor bounded by a distant ridge of hills.
A mist lay over the face of the low land, a mist that rose like an evil thing born of quags and marshes, that hurried to be gone before the dawn. And far out on the moor a great red eye glared, a dark crimson pupil in an iris of orange light, that hung spectral-like above the world and pulsed and ogled like an unholy eye.
The smaller man leaned forward and looked intently at that far-away conflagration swimming in the mist. For a full ten seconds he regarded it and, as he looked there into that red pupil, his eyes in the shadow of his helmet threw back a glint of red, for even at that distance a faint tinge of its fury dyed the air like the glare from a furnace door, flushing the wall of trees on the farther side of the car. One would have thought that the fire fascinated him, for as he looked his head went slowly forward as a bird goes to a snake. His lips went down at the corners and he laughed harshly.
“Look!” he said, nudging the other, “some one is warming himself this morning. What place can that be?”
The other pondered a moment; then reading easily from the map of his well-stored, well-ordered supermind, he answered: “This is where the Uti
lization Factory of the Tenth Army Section is situated, and those should be the buildings that are ablaze yonder. The flame spreads from below upwards,” he added, with a laugh. “The main building is a big one and there should be a crash soon; it should be worth watching. I suppose it came from above,” and he glanced upward; “but I thought they were safe here. Curse those planes!” Thus with idiot lips he too gabbled the high truths given him.
The other was about to lie back on the cushions, his mind ready to rove from that new toy of the fire, when a whim seized him, given as he was to fantastic tricks. He leaned forward and rapped on the front window, and the car drew up. The cars ahead and behind also stopped and by the time he was on the road a group of officers stood around him at a respectful distance.
“Come, Marshal,” he said, “we will walk a little way in this fresh air and see that nearer. The crash would not be complete without us,” and he chuckled.
The other in the car got up lumberingly, and with a “You command, Highness,” which scarcely disguised his grumpiness, stepped out beside him on the moor. Four of the others fell in behind, some ten yards off, walking stiffly, their eyes straight ahead and unmindful of the moor’s beauties, for even in its evil it was a thing of loveliness there in the presage of the dawn.
The sky was now almost completely clear and the mist was paling rapidly, waning the anger of that red eye that glowed before them. Behind them the dark fringe of the forest was faintly tinged with rose against the night that rolled back yonder in the west. Far off, the hills lay on the horizon and in the sky above the hills the morning Star hung clear as a spark of crystal light.
The flame that drew them burned ahead and they trudged forward, their feet making a sound of chugging in the quaggy patches that interspersed the firmer ground.