He came to with a start. His mouth was dry and hard, his heart beat heavily,
but he had not the energy to get up. His heart beat heavily. Where was
he?—the barracks—at home? There was something knocking. And, making
an effort, he looked round—trees, and litter of greenery, and reddish,
night, still pieces of sunshine on the floor. He did not believe he was
himself, he did not believe what he saw. Something was knocking. He made a
struggle towards consciousness, but relapsed. Then he struggled again. And
gradually his surroundings fell into relationship with himself. He knew, and a
great pang of fear went through his heart. Somebody was knocking. He could see
the heavy, black rags of a fir tree overhead. Then everything went black. Yet
he did not believe he had closed his eyes. He had not. Out of the blackness
sight slowly emerged again. And someone was knocking. Quickly, he saw the
blood-disgfigured face of his Captain, which he hated. And he held himself
still with horror. Yet, deep inside him, he knew that it was so, the Captain
should be dead. But the physical delirium got hold of him. Someone was
knocking. He lay perfectly still, as if dead, with fear. And he went
unconscious.
When he opened his eyes again, he started, seeing something creeping swiftly up
a tree-trunk. It was a little bird. And the bird was whistling overhead.
Tap-tap-tap—it was the small, quick bird rapping the tree-trunk with its
beak, as if its head were a little round hammer. He watched it curiously. It
shifted sharply, in its creeping fashion. Then, like a mouse, it slid down the
bare trunk. Its swift creeping sent a flash of revulsion through him. He raised
his head. It felt a great weight. Then, the little bird ran out of the shadow
across a still patch of sunshine, its little head bobbing swiftly, its white
legs twinkling brightly for a moment. How neat it was in its build, so compact,
with pieces of white on its wings. There were several of them. They were so
pretty—but they crept like swift, erratic mice, running here and there
among the beech-mast.
He lay down again exhausted, and his consciousness lapsed. He had a horror of
the little creeping birds. All his blood seemed to be darting and creeping in
his head. And yet he could not move.
He came to with a further ache of exhaustion. There was the pain in his head,
and the horrible sickness, and his inability to move. He had never been ill in
his life. He did not know where he was or what he was. Probably he had got
sunstroke. Or what else?—he had silenced the Captain for ever—some
time ago—oh, a long time ago. There had been blood on his face, and his
eyes had turned upwards. It was all right, somehow. It was peace. But now he
had got beyond himself. He had never been here before. Was it life, or not
life? He was by himself. They were in a big, bright place, those others, and he
was outside. The town, all the country, a big bright place of light: and he was
outside, here, in the darkened open beyond, where each thing existed alone. But
they would all have to come out there sometime, those others. Little, and left
behind him, they all were. There had been father and mother and sweetheart.
What did they all matter? This was the open land.
He sat up. Something scuffled. It was a little, brown squirrel running in
lovely, undulating bounds over the floor, its red tail completing the
undulation of its body—and then, as it sat up, furling and unfurling. He
watched it, pleased. It ran on friskily, enjoying itself. It flew wildly at
another squirrel, and they were chasing each other, and making little scolding,
chattering noises. The soldier wanted to speak to them. But only a hoarse sound
came out of his throat. The squirrels burst away—they flew up the trees.
And then he saw the one peeping round at him, half-way up a tree-trunk. A start
of fear went through him, though, in so far as he was conscious, he was amused.
It still stayed, its little, keen face staring at him halfway up the
tree-trunk, its little ears pricked up, its clawey little hands clinging to the
bark, its white breast reared. He started from it in panic.
Struggling to his feet, he lurched away. He went on walking, walking, looking
for something for a drink. His brain felt hot and inflamed for want of water.
He stumbled on. Then he did not know anything. He went unconscious as he
walked. Yet he stumbled on, his mouth open.
When, to his dumb wonder, he opened his eyes on the world again, he no longer
tried to remember what it was. There was thick, golden light behind
golden-green glitterings, and tall, grey-purple shafts, and darknesses further
off, surrounding him, growing deeper. He was conscious of a sense of arrival.
He was amid the reality, on the real, dark bottom. But there was the thirst
burning in his brain. He felt lighter, not so heavy. He supposed it was
newness.
The air was muttering with thunder. He thought he was walking wonderfully
swiftly and was coming straight to relief—or was it to water?
Suddenly he stood still with fear. There was a tremendous flare of gold,
immense—just a few dark trunks like bars between him and it. All the
young level wheat was burnished gold glaring on its silky green. A woman,
full-skirted, a black cloth on her head for head-dress, was passing like a
block of shadow through the glistening, green corn, into the full glare. There
was a farm, too, pale blue in shadow, and the timber black. And there was a
church spire, nearly fused away in the gold. The woman moved on, away from him.
He had no language with which to speak to her. She was the bright, solid
unreality. She would make a noise of words that would confuse him, and her eyes
would look at him without seeing him. She was crossing there to the other side.
He stood against a tree.
When at last he turned, looking down the long, bare grove whose flat bed was
already filling dark, he saw the mountains in a wonder-light, not far away, and
radiant. Behind the soft, grey ridge of the nearest range the further mountains
stood golden and pale grey, the snow all radiant like pure, soft gold. So
still, gleaming in the sky, fashioned pure out of the ore of the sky, they
shone in their silence. He stood and looked at them, his face illuminated. And
like the golden, lustrous gleaming of the snow he felt his own thirst bright in
him. He stood and gazed, leaning against a tree. And then everything slid away
into space.
During the night the lightning fluttered perpetually, making the whole sky
white. He must have walked again. The world hung livid round him for moments,
fields a level sheen of grey-green light, trees in dark bulk, and the range of
clouds black across a white sky. Then the darkness fell like a shutter, and the
night was whole. A faint mutter of a half-revealed world, that could not quite
leap out of the darkness!—Then there again stood a sweep of pallor for
the land, dark shapes looming, a range of clouds hanging overhead. The world
was a ghostly shadow, thrown for a moment upon the pure darkness, which
returned ever whole and complete.
And the mere delirium of sickness and fever went on inside him—his brain
opening and shutting like the night—then sometimes convulsions of terror
from something with great eyes that stared round a tree—then the long
agony of the march, and the sun decomposing his blood—then the pang of
hate for the Captain, followed, by a pang of tenderness and ease. But
everything was distorted, born of an ache and resolving into an ache.
In the morning he came definitely awake. Then his brain flamed with the sole
horror of thirstiness! The sun was on his face, the dew was steaming from his
wet clothes. Like one possessed, he got up. There, straight in front of him,
blue and cool and tender, the mountains ranged across the pale edge of the
morning sky. He wanted them—he wanted them alone—he wanted to leave
himself and be identified with them. They did not move, they were still and
soft, with white, gentle markings of snow. He stood still, mad with suffering,
his hands crisping and clutching. Then he was twisting in a paroxysm on the
grass.
He lay still, in a kind of dream of anguish. His thirst seemed to have
separated itself from him, and to stand apart, a single demand. Then the pain
he felt was another single self. Then there was the clog of his body, another
separate thing. He was divided among all kinds of separate beings. There was
some strange, agonized connection between them, but they were drawing further
apart. Then they would all split. The sun, drilling down on him, was drilling
through the bond. Then they would all fall, fall through the everlasting lapse
of space. Then again, his consciousness reasserted itself. He roused on to his
elbow and stared at the gleaming mountains. There they ranked, all still and
wonderful between earth and heaven. He stared till his eyes went black, and the
mountains, as they stood in their beauty, so clean and cool, seemed to have it,
that which was lost in him.
