The Tree of Heaven Part 66

And now I'll try to answer your letter. Yes; the "ecstasy" in the last two poems _is_ Nicky's ecstasy. And as Ellis says it strikes him as absolutely real, I take it that some of Nicky's "reality" has got through. It's hard on Ellis that he has to take _his_ ecstasy from me, instead of coming out and getting it for himself.

But you and Nicky and Lawrence are right. It _is_ absolutely real. I mean it has to do with absolute reality. With G.o.d. It hasn't anything to do with having courage, or not having courage; it's another state of mind altogether. It isn't what Nicky's man said it was--you're not ashamed of it the next day. It isn't excitement; you're not excited. It isn't a tingling of your nerves; they don't tingle. It's all curiously quiet and steady. You remember when you saw Nicky--how everything stood still? And how two times were going on, and you and Nicky were in one time, and Mother was in the other? Well--it's like that. Your body and its nerves aren't in it at all. Your body may be moving violently, with other bodies moving violently round it; but _you_'re still.

But suppose it is your nerves. Why should they tingle at just that particular moment, the moment that makes _animals_ afraid? Why should you be so extraordinarily happy? Why should the moment of extreme danger be always the "exquisite" moment? Why not the moment of safety?

Doesn't it look as if danger were the point of contact with reality, and death the closest point? You're through. Actually you lay hold on eternal life, and you know it.

Another thing--it always comes with that little shock of recognition.

It's happened before, and when you get near to it again you know what it is. You keep on wanting to get near it, wanting it to happen again. You may lose it the next minute, but you know. Lawrence knew what it was.

Nicky knew.

June 19th.

I'm coming back to it--after that interruption--because I want to get the thing clear. I have to put it down as I feel it; there's no other way. But they mustn't think it's something that only Lawrence and Nicky and I feel. The men feel it too, even when they don't know what it is.

And some of them _do_ know.

Of course we shall be accused of glorifying War and telling lies about it. Well--there's a Frenchman who has told the truth, piling up all the horrors, faithfully, remorselessly, magnificently. But he seems to think people oughtn't to write about this War at all unless they show up the infamy of it, as a deterrent, so that no Government can ever start another one. It's a sort of literary "frightfulness." But who is he trying to frighten? Does he imagine that France, or England, or Russia or Belgium, or Serbia, will want to start another war when this is over?

And does he suppose that Germany--if we don't beat her--will be deterred by his frightfulness? Germany's arrogance will be satisfied when she knows she's made a Frenchman feel like that about it.

He's got his truth all right. As Morrie would say: "That's War." But a peaceful earthquake can do much the same thing. And if _our_ truth--what _we_'ve seen--isn't War, at any rate it's what we've got out of it, it's our "glory," our spiritual compensation for the physical torture, and there would be a sort of infamy in trying to take it from us. It isn't the French Government, or the British that's fighting Germany; it's we--all of us. To insist on the world remembering nothing but these horrors is as if men up to their knees in the filth they're clearing away should complain of each other for standing in it and splashing it about.

The filth of War--and the physical torture--Good G.o.d! As if the world was likely to forget it. Any more than we're likely to forget what _we_ know.

You remember because you've known it before and it all hangs together.

It's not as if danger were the only point of contact with reality. You get the same ecstasy, the same shock of recognition, and the same utter satisfaction when you see a beautiful thing. At least to me it's like that. You know what Nicky thought it was like. You know what it was like when you used to sit looking and looking at Mother's "tree of Heaven."

It's odd, Ronny, to have gone all your life trying to get reality, trying to get new beauty, trying to get utter satisfaction; to have funked coming out here because you thought it was all obscene ugliness and waste and frustration, and then to come out, and to find what you wanted.

June 25th.

I wrote all that, while I could, because I want to make them see it.

It's horrible that Dorothy should think that Drayton's dead and that Mother should think that Nicky's dead, when they wouldn't, if they really knew. If they don't believe Lawrence or me, can't they believe Nicky? I'm only saying what he said. But I can't write to them about it because they make me shy, and I'm afraid they'll think I'm only ga.s.sing, or "making poetry"--as if poetry wasn't the most real thing there is!

If anybody can make them see it, you can.--Always your affectionate,

MICHAEL.

XXV

Anthony was going into the house to take back the key of the workshop.

He had locked the door of the workshop a year ago, after Nicky's death, and had not opened it again until to-day. This afternoon in the orchard he had seen that the props of the old apple-tree were broken and he had thought that he would like to make new ones, and the wood was in the workshop.

Everything in there was as it had been when Nicky finished with his Moving Fortress. The bra.s.s and steel filings lay in a heap under the lathe, the handle was tilted at the point where he had left it; pits in the saw-dust showed where his feet had stood. His overalls hung over the bench where he had slipped them off.

Anthony had sat down on the bench and had looked at these things with remembrance and foreboding. He thought of Nicky and of Nicky's pleasure and excitement over the unpacking of his first lathe--the one he had begged for for his birthday--and of his own pleasure and excitement as he watched his boy handling it and showing him so cleverly how it worked. It stood there still in the corner. Nicky had given it to Veronica. He had taught her how to use it. And Anthony thought of Veronica when she was little; he saw Nicky taking care of her, teaching her to run and ride and play games. And he remembered what Veronica's mother had said to him and Frances: "Wait till Nicky has children of his own."

He thought of John. John had volunteered three times and had been three times rejected. And now conscription had got him. He had to appear before the Board of Examiners that afternoon. He might be rejected again. But the standard was not so exacting as it had been--John might be taken.

He thought of his business--John's business and his, and Bartie's. Those big Government contracts had more than saved them. They were making tons of money out of the War. Even when the Government cut down their profits; even when they had given more than half they made to the War funds, the fact remained that they were living on the War. Bartie, without a wife or children, was appallingly rich.

If John were taken. If John were killed--

If Michael died--

Michael had been reported seriously wounded.

He had thought then of Michael. And he had not been able to bear thinking any more. He had got up and left the workshop, locking the door behind him, forgetting what he had gone in for; and he had taken the key back to the house. He kept it in what his children used to call the secret drawer of his bureau. It lay there with Nicky's last letter of June, 1915, and a slab of coromandel wood.

It was when he was going into the house with the key that John met him.

"Have they taken you?"

"Yes."

John's face was hard and white. They went together into Anthony's room.

"It's what you wanted," Anthony said.

"Of course it's what I wanted. I want it more than ever now.

"The wire's come, Father. Mother opened it."

It was five days now since they had heard that Michael had died of his wounds. Frances was in Michael's room. She was waiting for Dorothea and Veronica to help her to find his papers. It was eight o'clock in the evening, and they had to be sorted and laid out ready for Morton Ellis to look over them to-morrow. To-morrow Morton Ellis would come, and he would take them away.

The doors of Michael's and of Nicky's rooms were always kept shut; Frances knew that, if she were to open the door on the other side of the corridor and look in, every thing in Nicky's room would welcome her with tenderness even while it inflicted its unique and separate wound. But Michael's room was bare and silent. He had cleared everything away out of her sight last year before he went. The very books on the shelves repudiated her; reminded her that she had never understood him, that he had always escaped her. His room kept his secret, and she felt afraid and abashed in it, knowing herself an intruder. Presently all that was most precious in it would be taken from her and given over to a stranger whom he had never liked.

Her mind turned and fastened on one object--the stiff, naked wooden chair standing in its place before the oak table by the window. She remembered how she had come to Michael there and found him writing at his table, and how she had talked to him as though he had been a shirker and a coward.

She had borne Nicky's death. But she could not bear Michael's. She stood there in his room, staring, hypnotized by her memory. She heard Dorothea come in and go out again. And then Veronica came in.

She turned to Veronica to help her.

She clung to Veronica and was jealous of her. Veronica had not come between her and Nicky as long as he was alive, but now that he was dead she came between them. She came between her and Michael too. Michael's mind had always been beyond her; she could only reach it through Veronica and through Veronica's secret. Her mind clutched at Veronica's secret, and flung it away as useless, and returned, clutching at it again.

It was as if Veronica held the souls of Michael and Nicholas in her hands. She offered her the souls of her dead sons. She was the mediator between her and their souls.

"I could bear it, Veronica, if I hadn't made him go. I came to him, here, in this room, and bullied him till he went. I said horrible things to him--that he must have remembered.

"He wasn't like Nicky--it was infinitely worse for him. And I was cruel to him. I had no pity. I drove him out--to be killed.