The Tree of Heaven Part 50

One by one they got up, and slunk out of the room, as if they were guilty, and left her alone with him.

It was not like yesterday. He did not take her in his arms. He sat there, looking at her rather anxiously, keeping his distance. He seemed to be wondering how she was going to take it.

He thought: "I've made a mess of it again. It wasn't fair to make her want me--when I might have known. I ought to have left it."

And suddenly her soul swung round, released from yesterday.

She knew what he had wanted yesterday: that her senses should be ready to follow where her heart led. But that was not the readiness he required from her to-day; rather it was what his anxious eyes implored her to put away from her.

There was something more.

He wasn't going to say the obvious things, the "Well, this is hard luck on both of us. You must be brave. Don't make it too hard for me." (She could have made it intolerable.) It wasn't that. He knew she was brave; he knew she wouldn't make it hard for him; he knew he hadn't got to say the obvious things.

There was something more; something tremendous. It came to her with the power and sweetness of first pa.s.sion; but without its fear. She no longer wanted him to take her in his arms and hold her as he had held her yesterday. Her swinging soul was steady; it vibrated to an intenser rhythm.

She knew nothing now but that what she saw was real, and that they were seeing it together. It was Reality itself. It was more than they. When realization pa.s.sed it would endure.

Never as long as they lived would they be able to speak of it, to say to each other what it was they felt and saw.

He said, "I shall have to go soon."

And she said, "I know. Is there anything I can do?"

"I wish you'd go and see my mother some time. She'd like it."

"I should love to go and see her. What else?"

"Well--I've no business to ask you, but I wish you'd give it up."

"I'll give anything up. But what?"

"That ambulance of yours that's going to get into the firing line."

"Oh--"

"I know why you want to get there. You want to tackle the hardest and most dangerous job. Naturally. But it won't make it easier for us to win the War. You can't expect us to fight so comfy, and to be killed so comfy, if we know our womenkind are being pounded to bits in the ground we've just cleared. If I thought _you_ were knocking about anywhere there--"

"It would make it too hard?"

"It would make me jumpy. The chances are I shouldn't have much time to think about it, but when I did--"

"You'd think 'She might have spared me _that_.'"

"Yes. And you might think of your people. It's bad enough for them, Nicky going."

"It isn't only that I'd have liked to be where you'll be, and where he'll be. That was natural."

"It's also natural that we should like to find you here when we come back."

"I was thinking of those Belgian women, and the babies--and England; so safe, Frank; so disgustingly safe."

"I know. Leaving the children in the burning house?"

(She had said that once and he had remembered.)

"You can do more for them by staying in England--I'm asking you to take the hardest job, really."

"It isn't; if it's what you want most."

He had risen. He was going. His hands were on her shoulders, and they were still discussing it as if it were the most momentous thing.

"Of course," she said, "I won't go if you feel like that about it. I want you to fight comfy. You mustn't worry about me."

"Nor you about me. I shall be all right. Remember--it's _your_ War, too--it's the biggest fight for freedom--"

"I know," she said.

And then: "Have you got all your things?"

"Somebody's got 'em."

"I haven't given you anything. You must have my wrist-watch."

She unstrapped the leather band and put it on him.

"My wrist's a whopper."

"So's mine. It'll just meet--at the last hole. It's phosphorous," she said. "You can see the time by it in the dark."

"I've nothing for _you_. Except--" he fumbled in his pockets--"I say--here's the wedding-ring."

They laughed.

"What more could you want?" she said.

He put it on her finger; she raised her face to him and he stooped and kissed her. He held her for a minute in his arms. But it was not like yesterday.

Suddenly his face stiffened. "Tell them," he said, "that I'm going."

The British were retreating from Mons.

The German attack was not like the advance of an Army but like the travelling of an earthquake, the bursting of a sea-wall. There was no end to the grey battalions, no end to the German Army, no end to the German people. And there was no news of British reinforcements, or rumour of reinforcements.

"They come on like waves. Like waves," said Dorothea, reading from the papers.

"I wouldn't read about it if I were you, darling," said Frances.