The Tree of Heaven Part 60

"I say--did you ever do it to me?"

"Only once, when you wanted it awfully."

"When? When?"

Now he was interested; he was intrigued; he was on her trail.

"When Desmond did--that awful thing. I wanted you to see that it didn't matter, it wasn't the end."

"But that's just what I did see, what I kept on telling myself. It looks as if it worked, then?"

"It doesn't always. It comes and goes. But I think with _you_ it would always come; because you're more _me_ than other people; I mean I care more for you."

She closed and clinched it. "That's why you're not to bother about me, Nicky. If _the_ most awful thing happened, and you didn't come back, It would come."

"I wish I knew what It was," he said.

"I don't know what it is. But it's so real that I think it's G.o.d."

"That's why _they're_ so magnificently brave--Dorothy and Aunt Frances and all of them. They don't believe in it; they don't know it's there; even Michael doesn't know it's there--yet; and still they go on bearing and bearing; and they were glad to give you up."

"I know," he said; "lots of people _say_ they're glad, but they really _are_ glad."

He meditated.

"There's one thing. I can't think what you do, unless it's praying or something; and if you're going to turn it on to me, Ronny, I wish you'd be careful; because it seems to me that if there's anything in it at all, there might be hitches. I mean to say, you might work it just enough to keep me from being killed but not enough to keep my legs from being blown off. Or the Boches might get me fair enough and you might bring me back, all paralysed and idiotic.

"That's what I should funk. I should funk it most d.a.m.nably, if I thought about it. Luckily one doesn't think."

"But, Nicky, I shouldn't try to keep you back then any more than I tried before."

"You wouldn't? Honour bright?"

"Of course I wouldn't. It wouldn't be playing the game. To begin with, I won't believe that you're not going to get through.

"But if you didn't--if you didn't come back--I still wouldn't believe you'd gone. I should say, 'He hasn't cared. He's gone on to something else. It doesn't end him.'"

He was silent. The long rampart of the hill, as he stared at it, made a pattern on his mind; a pattern that he paid no attention to.

Veronica followed the direction of his eyes. "Do you mind talking about it?" she said.

"Me? Rather not. It sort of interests me. I don't know whether I believe in your thing or not; but I've always had that feeling, that you go on.

You don't stop; you can't stop. That's why I don't care. They used to think I was trying to be funny when I said I didn't care. But I really didn't. Things, most things, don't much matter, because there's always something else. You go on to it.

"I care for _you_. _You_ matter most awfully; and my people; but most of all you. You always have mattered to me more than anything, since the first time I heard you calling out to me to come and sit on your bed because you were frightened. You always will matter.

"But Desmond didn't a little bit. You need'nt have tried to make me _think_ she didn't. She really didn't. I only married her because she was going to have a baby. And _that_ was because I remembered you and the rotten time you'd had. I believe that would have kept me straight with women if nothing else did.

"Of course I was an idiot about it. I didn't think of marrying you till Vera told me I ought to have waited. Then it was too late.

"That's why I want you most awfully to have a baby."

"Yes, Nicky.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do when I know it's coming. The cottage belongs to Uncle Anthony, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, I love it. Do you think he'd let me live in it?"

"I think he'd give it to you if you asked him."

"For my very own. Like the apple-tree house. Very well, he'll give it to me--I mean to both of us--and I shall come up here where it's all quiet and you'd never know there was a war at all--even the Belgians have forgotten it. And I shall sit out here and look at that hill, because it's straight and beautiful. I won't--I simply won't think of anything that isn't straight and beautiful. And I shall get strong. Then the baby will be straight and beautiful and strong, too.

"I shall try--I shall try hard, Nicky--to make him like you."

Frances's one Day was not a success. It was taken up with little things that had to be done for Nicky. Always they seemed, he and she, to be on the edge of something great, something satisfying and revealing. It was to come in a look or a word; and both would remember it afterwards for ever.

In the evening Grannie, and Auntie Louie, and Auntie Emmeline, and Auntie Edie, and Uncle Morrie, and Uncle Bartie came up to say good-bye.

And in the morning Nicholas went off to France, excited and happy, as he had gone off on his wedding journey. And between Frances and her son the great thing remained unsaid.

Time itself was broken. All her minutes were scattered like fine sand.

_February 27th, 1915._ B.E.F., FRANCE.

Dearest Mother and Dad,--I simply don't know how to thank you all for the fur coat. It's p.r.o.nounced the rippingest, by a long way, that's been seen in these trenches. Did Ronny really choose it because it "looked as if it had been made out of Timmy's tummy?" It makes me feel as if I _was_ Timmy. Timmy on his hind legs, rampant, clawing at the Boches.

Just think of the effect if he got up over the parapet!

The other things came all right, too, thanks. When you can't think what else to send let Nanna make another cake. And those tubes of chutney are a good idea.

No; it's no earthly use worrying about Michael. If there was no English and no Allies and no Enthusiasm, and he had this War all to himself, you simply couldn't keep him out of it. I believe if old Mick could send himself out by himself against the whole German Army he'd manage to put in some first rate fancy work in the second or two before they got him.

He'd be quite capable of going off and doing grisly things that would make me faint with funk, if he was by himself, with nothing but the eye of G.o.d to look at him. And _then_ he'd rather G.o.d wasn't there. He always _was_ afraid of having a crowd with him.

The pity is he's wasting time and missing such a lot. If I were you two, I should bank on Don. He's the sensiblest of us, though he is the youngest.

And don't worry about me. Do remember that even in the thickest curtain fire there _are_ holes; there are more holes than there is stuff; and the chances are I shall be where a hole is.

Another thing, Don's sh.e.l.l, the sh.e.l.l you see making straight for you like an express train, isn't likely to be the sh.e.l.l that's going to get you; so that if you're hit you don't feel that pang of personal resentment which must be the worst part of the business. Bits of sh.e.l.ls that have exploded I rank with bullets which we knew all about before and were prepared for. Really, if you're planted out in the open, the peculiar awfulness of big sh.e.l.l-fire--what is it more than the peculiar awfulness of being run over by express trains let loose about the sky?

Tell Don that when shrapnel empties itself over your head like an old tin pail, you might feel injured, but the big sh.e.l.l has a most disarming air of not being able to help itself, of not looking for anybody in particular. It's so innocent of personal malice that I'd rather have it any day than fat German fingers squeezing my windpipe.

That's an answer to his question.

And Dorothy wanted to know what it feels like going into action.

Well--there's a lot of it that perhaps she wouldn't believe in if I told her--it's the sort of thing she never has believed; but Stephen was absolutely right. You aren't sold. It's more than anything you could have imagined. I'm not speaking only for myself.

There's just one beastly sensation when you're half way between your parapet and theirs--other fellows say they've felt it too--when you're afraid it (the feeling) should fizzle out before you get there. But it doesn't. It grows more and more so, simply swinging you on to them, and that swing makes up for all the rotten times put together. You needn't be sorry for us. It's waste of pity.