He was getting used even to his parched throat. That the snowy peaks were
radiant among the sky, that the whity-green glacier-river twisted through its
pale shoals, in the valley below, seemed almost supernatural. But he was going
mad with fever and thirst. He plodded on uncomplaining. He did not want to
speak, not to anybody. There were two gulls, like flakes of water and snow,
over the river. The scent of green rye soaked in sunshine came like a sickness.
And the march continued, monotonously, almost like a bad sleep.
At the next farm-house, which stood low and broad near the high road, tubs of
water had been put out. The soldiers clustered round to drink. They took off
their helmets, and the steam mounted from their wet hair. The Captain sat on
horseback, watching. He needed to see his orderly. His helmet threw a dark
shadow over his light, fierce eyes, but his moustache and mouth and chin were
distinct in the sunshine. The orderly must move under the presence of the
figure of the horseman. It was not that he was afraid, or cowed. It was as if
he was disembowelled, made empty, like an empty shell. He felt himself as
nothing, a shadow creeping under the sunshine. And, thirsty as he was, he could
scarcely drink, feeling the Captain near him. He would not take off his helmet
to wipe his wet hair. He wanted to stay in shadow, not to be forced into
consciousness. Starting, he saw the light heel of the officer prick the belly
of the horse; the Captain cantered away, and he himself could relapse into
vacancy.
Nothing, however, could give him back his living place in the hot, bright
morning. He felt like a gap among it all. Whereas the Captain was prouder,
overriding. A hot flash went through the young servant’s body. The
Captain was firmer and prouder with life, he himself was empty as a shadow.
Again the flash went through him, dazing him out. But his heart ran a little
firmer.
The company turned up the hill, to make a loop for the return. Below, from
among the trees, the farm-bell clanged. He saw the labourers, mowing barefoot
at the thick grass, leave off their work and go downhill, their scythes hanging
over their shoulders, like long, bright claws curving down behind them. They
seemed like dream-people, as if they had no relation to himself. He felt as in
a blackish dream: as if all the other things were there and had form, but he
himself was only a consciousness, a gap that could think and perceive.
The soldiers were tramping silently up the glaring hillside. Gradually his head
began to revolve, slowly, rhythmically. Sometimes it was dark before his eyes,
as if he saw this world through a smoked glass, frail shadows and unreal. It
gave him a pain in his head to walk.
The air was too scented, it gave no breath. All the lush green-stuff seemed to
be issuing its sap, till the air was deathly, sickly with the smell of
greenness. There was the perfume of clover, like pure honey and bees. Then
there grew a faint acrid tang—they were near the beeches; and then a
queer clattering noise, and a suffocating, hideous smell; they were passing a
flock of sheep, a shepherd in a black smock, holding his crook. Why should the
sheep huddle together under this fierce sun. He felt that the shepherd would
not see him, though he could see the shepherd.
At last there was the halt. They stacked rifles in a conical stack, put down
their kit in a scattered circle around it, and dispersed a little, sitting on a
small knoll high on the hillside. The chatter began. The soldiers were steaming
with heat, but were lively. He sat still, seeing the blue mountains rising upon
the land, twenty kilometres away. There was a blue fold in the ranges, then out
of that, at the foot, the broad, pale bed of the river, stretches of
whity-green water between pinkish-grey shoals among the dark pine woods. There
it was, spread out a long way off. And it seemed to come downhill, the river.
There was a raft being steered, a mile away. It was a strange country. Nearer,
a red-roofed, broad farm with white base and square dots of windows crouched
beside the wall of beech foliage on the wood’s edge. There were long
strips of rye and clover and pale green corn. And just at his feet, below the
knoll, was a darkish bog, where globe flowers stood breathless still on their
slim stalks. And some of the pale gold bubbles were burst, and a broken
fragment hung in the air. He thought he was going to sleep.
Suddenly something moved into this coloured mirage before his eyes. The
Captain, a small, light-blue and scarlet figure, was trotting evenly between
the strips of corn, along the level brow of the hill. And the man making
flag-signals was coming on. Proud and sure moved the horseman’s figure,
the quick, bright thing, in which was concentrated all the light of this
morning, which for the rest lay a fragile, shining shadow. Submissive,
apathetic, the young soldier sat and stared. But as the horse slowed to a walk,
coming up the last steep path, the great flash flared over the body and soul of
the orderly. He sat waiting. The back of his head felt as if it were weighted
with a heavy piece of fire. He did not want to eat. His hands trembled slightly
as he moved them. Meanwhile the officer on horseback was approaching slowly and
proudly. The tension grew in the orderly’s soul. Then again, seeing the
Captain ease himself on the saddle, the flash blazed through him.
The Captain looked at the patch of light blue and scarlet, and dark heads,
scattered closely on the hillside. It pleased him. The command pleased him. And
he was feeling proud. His orderly was among them in common subjection. The
officer rose a little on his stirrups to look. The young soldier sat with
averted, dumb face. The Captain relaxed on his seat. His slim-legged, beautiful
horse, brown as a beech nut, walked proudly uphill. The Captain passed into the
zone of the company’s atmosphere: a hot smell of men, of sweat, of
leather. He knew it very well. After a word with the lieutenant, he went a few
paces higher, and sat there, a dominant figure, his sweat-marked horse swishing
its tail, while he looked down on his men, on his orderly, a nonentity among
the crowd.
The young soldier’s heart was like fire in his chest, and he breathed
with difficulty. The officer, looking downhill, saw three of the young
soldiers, two pails of water between them, staggering across a sunny green
field. A table had been set up under a tree, and there the slim lieutenant
stood, importantly busy. Then the Captain summoned himself to an act of
courage. He called his orderly.
The name leapt into the young soldier’s throat as he heard the command,
and he rose blindly stifled. He saluted, standing below the officer. He did not
look up. But there was the flicker in the Captain’s voice.
“Go to the inn and fetch me....” the officer gave his commands.
“Quick!” he added.
At the last word, the heart of the servant leapt with a flash, and he felt the
strength come over his body. But he turned in mechanical obedience, and set on
at a heavy run downhill, looking almost like a bear, his trousers bagging over
his military boots. And the officer watched this blind, plunging run all the
way.
But it was only the outside of the orderly’s body that was obeying so
humbly and mechanically. Inside had gradually accumulated a core into which all
the energy of that young life was compact and concentrated. He executed his
commission, and plodded quickly back uphill. There was a pain in his head, as
he walked, that made him twist his features unknowingly. But hard there in the
centre of his chest was himself, himself, firm, and not to be plucked to
pieces.
The captain had gone up into the wood. The orderly plodded through the hot,
powerfully smelling zone of the company’s atmosphere. He had a curious
mass of energy inside him now. The Captain was less real than himself. He
approached the green entrance to the wood. There, in the half-shade, he saw the
horse standing, the sunshine and the tuckering shadow of leaves dancing over
his brown body. There was a clearing where timber had lately been felled. Here,
in the gold-green shade beside the brilliant cup of sunshine, stood two
figures, blue and pink, the bits of pink showing out plainly. The Captain was
talking to his lieutenant.
The orderly stood on the edge of the bright clearing, where great trunks of
trees, stripped and glistening, lay stretched like naked, brown-skinned bodies.
Chips of wood littered the trampled floor, like splashed light, and the bases
of the felled trees stood here and there, with their raw, level tops. Beyond
was the brilliant, sunlit green of a beech.
“Then I will ride forward,” the orderly heard his Captain say. The
lieutenant saluted and strode away. He himself went forward. A hot flash passed
through his belly, as he tramped towards his officer.
The Captain watched the rather heavy figure of the young soldier stumble
forward, and his veins, too, ran hot. This was to be man to man between them.
He yielded before the solid, stumbling figure with bent head. The orderly
stooped and put the food on a level-sawn tree-base. The Captain watched the
glistening, sun-inflamed, naked hands. He wanted to speak to the young soldier,
but could not. The servant propped a bottle against his thigh, pressed open the
cork, and poured out the beer into the mug. He kept his head bent. The Captain
accepted the mug.
“Hot!” he said, as if amiably.
The flame sprang out of the orderly’s heart, nearly suffocating him.
“Yes, sir,” he replied, between shut teeth.
And he heard the sound of the Captain’s drinking, and he clenched his
fists, such a strong torment came into his wrists. Then came the faint clang of
the closing of the pot-lid. He looked up. The Captain was watching him. He
glanced swiftly away. Then he saw the officer stoop and take a piece of bread
from the tree-base. Again the flash of flame went through the young soldier,
seeing the stiff body stoop beneath him, and his hands jerked. He looked away.
He could feel the officer was nervous. The bread fell as it was being broken
The officer ate the other piece. The two men stood tense and still, the master
laboriously chewing his bread, the servant staring with averted face, his fist
clenched.
Then the young soldier started. The officer had pressed open the lid of the mug
again. The orderly watched the lid of the mug, and the white hand that clenched
the handle, as if he were fascinated. It was raised. The youth followed it with
his eyes. And then he saw the thin, strong throat of the elder man moving up
and down as he drank, the strong jaw working. And the instinct which had been
jerking at the young man’s wrists suddenly jerked free. He jumped,
feeling as if it were rent in two by a strong flame.
The spur of the officer caught in a tree-root, he went down backwards with a
crash, the middle of his back thudding sickeningly against a sharp-edged
tree-base, the pot flying away. And in a second the orderly, with serious,
earnest young face, and under-lip between his teeth, had got his knee in the
officer’s chest and was pressing the chin backward over the farther edge
of the tree-stump, pressing, with all his heart behind in a passion of relief,
the tension of his wrists exquisite with relief. And with the base of his palms
he shoved at the chin, with all his might. And it was pleasant, too, to have
that chin, that hard jaw already slightly rough with beard, in his hands. He
did not relax one hair’s breadth, but, all the force of all his blood
exulting in his thrust, he shoved back the head of the other man, till there
was a little cluck and a crunching sensation. Then he felt as if his head went
to vapour. Heavy convulsions shook the body of the officer, frightening and
horrifying the young soldier. Yet it pleased him, too, to repress them. It
pleased him to keep his hands pressing back the chin, to feel the chest of the
other man yield in expiration to the weight of his strong, young knees, to feel
the hard twitchings of the prostrate body jerking his own whole frame, which
was pressed down on it.
But it went still. He could look into the nostrils of the other man, the eyes
he could scarcely see. How curiously the mouth was pushed out, exaggerating the
full lips, and the moustache bristling up from them. Then, with a start, he
noticed the nostrils gradually filled with blood. The red brimmed, hesitated,
ran over, and went in a thin trickle down the face to the eyes.
It shocked and distressed him. Slowly, he got up. The body twitched and
sprawled there, inert. He stood and looked at it in silence. It was a pity it
was broken. It represented more than the thing which had kicked and bullied
him. He was afraid to look at the eyes. They were hideous now, only the whites
showing, and the blood running to them. The face of the orderly was drawn with
horror at the sight. Well, it was so. In his heart he was satisfied. He had
hated the face of the Captain. It was extinguished now. There was a heavy
relief in the orderly’s soul. That was as it should be. But he could not
bear to see the long, military body lying broken over the tree-base, the fine
fingers crisped. He wanted to hide it away.
Quickly, busily, he gathered it up and pushed it under the felled tree-trunks,
which rested their beautiful, smooth length either end on logs. The face was
horrible with blood. He covered it with the helmet. Then he pushed the limbs
straight and decent, and brushed the dead leaves off the fine cloth of the
uniform. So, it lay quite still in the shadow under there. A little strip of
sunshine ran along the breast, from a chink between the logs. The orderly sat
by it for a few moments. Here his own life also ended.
Then, through his daze, he heard the lieutenant, in a loud voice, explaining to
the men outside the wood, that they were to suppose the bridge on the river
below was held by the enemy. Now they were to march to the attack in such and
such a manner. The lieutenant had no gift of expression. The orderly, listening
from habit, got muddled. And when the lieutenant began it all again he ceased
to hear. He knew he must go. He stood up. It surprised him that the leaves were
glittering in the sun, and the chips of wood reflecting white from the ground.
For him a change had come over the world. But for the rest it had not—all
seemed the same. Only he had left it. And he could not go back. It was his duty
to return with the beer-pot and the bottle. He could not. He had left all that.
The lieutenant was still hoarsely explaining. He must go, or they would,
overtake him. And he could not bear contact with anyone now.
He drew his fingers over his eyes, trying to find out where he was. Then he
turned away. He saw the horse standing in the path. He went up to it and
mounted. It hurt him to sit in the saddle. The pain of keeping his seat
occupied him as they cantered through the wood. He would not have minded
anything, but he could not get away from the sense of being divided from the
others. The path led out of the trees. On the edge of the wood he pulled up and
stood watching. There in the spacious sunshine of the valley soldiers were
moving in a little swarm. Every now and then, a man harrowing on a strip of
fallow shouted to his oxen, at the turn. The village and the white-towered
church was small in the sunshine. And he no longer belonged to it—he sat
there, beyond, like a man outside in the dark. He had gone out from everyday
life into the unknown, and he could not, he even did not want to go back.
Turning from the sun-blazing valley, he rode deep into the wood. Tree-trunks,
like people standing grey and still, took no notice as he went. A doe, herself
a moving bit of sunshine and shadow, went running through the flecked shade.
There were bright green rents in the foliage. Then it was all pine wood, dark
and cool. And he was sick with pain, he had an intolerable great pulse in his
head, and he was sick. He had never been ill in his life, he felt lost, quite
dazed with all this.
Trying to get down from the horse, he fell, astonished at the pain and his lack
of balance. The horse shifted uneasily. He jerked its bridle and sent it
cantering jerkily away. It was his last connection with the rest of things.
But he only wanted to lie down and not be disturbed. Stumbling through the
trees, he came on a quiet place where beeches and pine trees grew on a slope.
Immediately he had lain down and closed his eyes, his consciousness went racing
on without him. A big pulse of sickness beat in him as if it throbbed through
the whole earth. He was burning with dry heat. But he was too busy, too
tearingly active in the incoherent race of delirium to observe.
