The Romantic Part 30

"Oh, Billy, won't you leave him one shred?"

"No. Not one shred."

Yet, even now, if he could only be splendid--If he could only be it! Why shouldn't Billy leave him one shred? After all, he didn't know all the awful things John had done; and she would never tell him.... He did know two things, the two things she didn't know. She had got to know them. The desire that urged her to the completion of her knowledge pursued her now.

She would possess him in her mind if in no other way.

"Billy--do you remember that day at Melle, when John lost me? Did you tell him I was going back with you?"

"No. I didn't."

Then he _had_ left her. And he had lied to both of them.

"Was the boy dead or alive when he left him?"

"He was alive all right. We could have saved him."

He had died--he had died of fright, then.

"You _said_ he was dead."

"I know I did. I lied."

"... And before that--when he was with you and Trixie on that battlefield--Did he--"

"Yes. Then, too ... You see there aren't any shreds. The only thing you can say is he can't help it. n.o.body'd have been hard on him if he hadn't ga.s.sed so much about danger."

"That's the part you can't understand.... But, Billy, why did you lie about him?"

"Because I didn't want you to know, then. I knew it would hurt you, I knew it would hurt you more than anything else."

"That was rather wonderful of you."

"Wasn't wonderful at all. I knew because what _you_ think, what _you_ feel, matters more to me than anything else. Except perhaps my job. I have to keep that separate."

Her mind slid over that, not caring, returning to the object of its interest.

"Look here, Billy, you may be right. It probably doesn't matter to us.

But it'll be perfectly awful for him."

"They can't do anything to him, Sharlie."

"It's what he'll do to himself."

"Suicide? Not he."

"I don't mean that. Can't you see that when he gets away to England, safe, and the funk settles down he'll start romancing all over again.

He'll see the whole war again like that; and then he'll remember what he's done. He'll have to live all his life remembering...."

"He won't. _You'll_ remember--_You'll_ suffer. You're feeling the shame he ought to feel and doesn't."

"Well, somebody's got to feel it.... And he'll feel it too. He won't be let off. As long as he lives he'll remember.... I don't want him to have that suffering."

"He's brought it on himself, Sharlie."

"I don't care. I don't want him to have it. I couldn't bear it if he got away."

"Of course, if you're going to be unhappy about it--"

"The only thing is, can we go after him? Can we spare a car?"

"Well yes, I can manage that all right. The fact is, the Germans may really be in to-morrow or Monday, and we're thinking of evacuating all the British wounded to-day. There are some men here that we ought to take to Ostend. I've been talking to the President about it."

And in the end they went with their wounded, less than an hour after John had started.

"I don't say I'll bring him back," said Sutton. "But at any rate we can find out what he's up to." He meditated.... "We mayn't have to bring him.

I shouldn't wonder if he came back on his own. He's like that. He can't stand danger yet he keeps on coming back to it. Can't leave it alone."

"I know. He isn't quite an ordinary coward."

"I'm not sure. I've known chaps like that. Can't keep away from the thing."

But she stuck to it. John's cowardice was not like other people's cowardice. Other cowards going into danger had the imagination of horror.

He had nothing but the imagination of romantic delight. It was the reality that became too much for him. He was either too stupid, or too securely wrapped up in his dream to reckon with reality. It surprised him every time. And he had no imaginative fear of fear. His fear must have surprised him.

"He'll have got away from Bruges," she said.

"I don't think so. He'll have to put up at the Convent for a bit, to let Gurney rest."

They had missed the Convent and were running down a narrow street towards the Market Place when they found John. He came on across a white bridge over a ca.n.a.l at the bottom. He was escorted by some Belgian women, dressed in black; they were talking and pointing up the street.

He said he had been to lunch in the town and had lost himself there and they were showing him the way back to the Convent.

She had seen all that before somewhere, John coming over the Ca.n.a.l bridge with the women in black.... She remembered. That was in one of her three dreams. Only what she saw now was incomplete. There had been something more in the dream. Something had happened.

It happened half an hour later when she went out to find John in the Convent garden where he was walking with the nuns. The garden shimmered in a silver mist from the ca.n.a.l, the broad gra.s.s plots, the clipped hedges, the cones and spikes of yew, the tall, feathery chrysanthemums, the trailing bowers and arches, were netted and laced and webbed with the silver mist. Down at the bottom of the path the forms of John and the three women showed blurred and insubstantial and still.

Presently they emerged, solid and clear; the nuns in their black habits and the raking white caps like wings that set them sailing along. They were showing John their garden, taking a shy, gentle, absorbed possession of him.

And as she came towards him John pa.s.sed her without speaking. But his face had turned to her with the look she had seen before. Eyes of hatred, eyes that repudiated and betrayed her.

The nuns had stopped, courteously, to greet her; she fell behind with one of them; the two others had overtaken John who had walked on, keeping up his stiff, repudiating air.

The air, the turn of the head, the look that she had dreamed. Only in the dream it had hurt her, and now she was hard and had no pain.

It was in the Convent garden that they played it out, in one final, astounding conversation.

The nuns had brought two chairs out on to the flagged terrace and set a small table there covered with a white cloth. Thus invited, John had no choice but to take his place beside her. Still he retained his mood.