Twelve Stories and a Dream (29 page)

"I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drew
together. I knew we were in danger, and that we could not stop there and
rest!

"Though all these things were in my mind, they were in the background.
They seemed to be affairs beyond our concern. Chiefly, I was thinking of
my lady. An aching distress filled me. For the first time she had owned
herself beaten and had fallen a-weeping. Behind me I could hear her
sobbing, but I would not turn round to her because I knew she had need
of weeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. It was well,
I thought, that she would weep and rest and then we would toil on again,
for I had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. Even now I can see
her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can mark again
the deepening hollow of her cheek.

"'If we had parted,' she said, 'if I had let you go.'

"'No,' said I. 'Even now, I do not repent. I will not repent; I made my
choice, and I will hold on to the end."

"And then—

"Overhead in the sky something flashed and burst, and all about us I
heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas suddenly thrown.
They chipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks
and passed...."

He put his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips.

"At the flash I had turned about....

"You know—she stood up—

"She stood up; you know, and moved a step towards me—

"As though she wanted to reach me—

"And she had been shot through the heart."

He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolish incapacity an
Englishman feels on such occasions. I met his eyes for a moment, and
then stared out of the window. For a long space we kept silence. When at
last I looked at him he was sitting back in his corner, his arms folded,
and his teeth gnawing at his knuckles.

He bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it.

"I carried her," he said, "towards the temples, in my arms—as though it
mattered. I don't know why. They seemed a sort of sanctuary, you know,
they had lasted so long, I suppose.

"She must have died almost instantly. Only—I talked to her—all the
way."

Silence again.

"I have seen those temples," I said abruptly, and indeed he had brought
those still, sunlit arcades of worn sandstone very vividly before me.

"It was the brown one, the big brown one. I sat down on a fallen pillar
and held her in my arms.... Silent after the first babble was over. And
after a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though
nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed.... It was
tremendously still there, the sun high, and the shadows still; even the
shadows of the weeds upon the entablature were still—in spite of the
thudding and banging that went all about the sky.

"I seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of the south, and
that the battle went away to the west. One aeroplane was struck, and
overset and fell. I remember that—though it didn't interest me in
the least. It didn't seem to signify. It was like a wounded gull, you
know—flapping for a time in the water. I could see it down the aisle of
the temple—a black thing in the bright blue water.

"Three or four times shells burst about the beach, and then that ceased.
Each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in and hid for a space.
That was all the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet gashed
the stone hard by—made just a fresh bright surface.

"As the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed greater.

"The curious thing," he remarked, with the manner of a man who makes a
trivial conversation, "is that I didn't THINK—I didn't think at all.
I sat with her in my arms amidst the stones—in a sort of
lethargy—stagnant.

"And I don't remember waking up. I don't remember dressing that day. I
know I found myself in my office, with my letters all slit open in front
of me, and how I was struck by the absurdity of being there, seeing that
in reality I was sitting, stunned, in that Paestum temple with a dead
woman in my arms. I read my letters like a machine. I have forgotten
what they were about."

He stopped, and there was a long silence.

Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the incline from Chalk
Farm to Euston. I started at this passing of time. I turned on him with
a brutal question, with the tone of Now or never.

"And did you dream again?"

"Yes."

He seemed to force himself to finish. His voice was very low.

"Once more, and as it were only for a few instants. I seemed to have
suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen into a sitting
position, and the body lay there on the stones beside me. A gaunt body.
Not her, you know. So soon—it was not her....

"I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only I knew clearly that men
were coming into the solitude and that that was a last outrage.

"I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came into
sight—first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform of dirty
white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing to the crest of
the old wall of the vanished city, and crouching there. They were little
bright figures in the sunlight, and there they hung, weapon in hand,
peering cautiously before them.

"And further away I saw others and then more at another point in the
wall. It was a long lax line of men in open order.

"Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a command, and
his men came tumbling down the wall and into the high weeds towards the
temple. He scrambled down with them and led them. He came facing towards
me, and when he saw me he stopped.

"At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when I
had seen they meant to come to the temple I was moved to forbid them. I
shouted to the officer.

"'You must not come here,' I cried, '
I
am here. I am here with my
dead.'

"He stared, and then shouted a question back to me in some unknown
tongue.

"I repeated what I had said.

"He shouted again, and I folded my arms and stood still. Presently he
spoke to his men and came forward. He carried a drawn sword.

"I signed to him to keep away, but he continued to advance. I told him
again very patiently and clearly: 'You must not come here. These are old
temples and I am here with my dead.'

"Presently he was so close I could see his face clearly. It was a narrow
face, with dull grey eyes, and a black moustache. He had a scar on
his upper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. He kept shouting
unintelligible things, questions perhaps, at me.

"I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did not
occur to me. As I tried to explain to him he interrupted me in imperious
tones, bidding me, I suppose, stand aside.

"He made to go past me, And I caught hold of him.

"I saw his face change at my grip.

"'You fool,' I cried. 'Don't you know? She is dead!'

"He started back. He looked at me with cruel eyes. I saw a sort of
exultant resolve leap into them—delight. Then, suddenly, with a scowl,
he swept his sword back—SO—and thrust."

He stopped abruptly. I became aware of a change in the rhythm of the
train. The brakes lifted their voices and the carriage jarred and
jerked. This present world insisted upon itself, became clamorous. I saw
through the steamy window huge electric lights glaring down from tall
masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages passing by, and
then a signal-box, hoisting its constellation of green and red into the
murky London twilight marched after them. I looked again at his drawn
features.

"He ran me through the heart. It was with a sort of astonishment—no
fear, no pain—but just amazement, that I felt it pierce me, felt the
sword drive home into my body. It didn't hurt, you know. It didn't hurt
at all."

The yellow platform lights came into the field of view, passing first
rapidly, then slowly, and at last stopping with a jerk. Dim shapes of
men passed to and fro without.

"Euston!" cried a voice.

"Do you mean—?"

"There was no pain, no sting or smart. Amazement and then darkness
sweeping over everything. The hot, brutal face before me, the face
of the man who had killed me, seemed to recede. It swept out of
existence—"

"Euston!" clamoured the voices outside; "Euston!"

The carriage door opened, admitting a flood of sound, and a porter stood
regarding us. The sounds of doors slamming, and the hoof-clatter of
cab-horses, and behind these things the featureless remote roar of the
London cobble-stones, came to my ears. A truckload of lighted lamps
blazed along the platform.

"A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted out
all things."

"Any luggage, sir?" said the porter.

"And that was the end?" I asked.

He seemed to hesitate. Then, almost inaudibly, he answered, "No."

"You mean?"

"I couldn't get to her. She was there on the other side of the
Temple—And then—"

"Yes," I insisted. "Yes?"

"Nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! My God! Great birds that
fought and tore."