Strange Yesterday (25 page)

John Preswick said: “So often the sun sets! And then it is dark. We never question that the sun will come again, do we, Inez?”

“No,” she answered him quietly, “we never question it, John Preswick.”

The night-breeze came, soft, half warm, half cool, drifting reluctantly and apologetically. She shivered a little, and he held her closer.

When they stood up, they turned and, hand in hand, they walked towards the house, snubbing their toes in the thick grass. And from beneath them, the night-breeze took the scent of the garden, flinging it into their lips and nostrils, until they gasped to take the choking from their breath. They came to the house, and they walked in, passing through the garden and pausing beneath the high, slim portico before they opened the door. The room directly before them was dark, but as they stood there, their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and they made out the form of Mrs. Vetchen sunk in a chair in one corner. On tiptoe they would have gone past, but Inez caught his hand when they were in the middle of the chamber.

“She is asleep. Listen to her breathing.”

Inez held his hand tighter, and they remained there, tense in the darkness, looking at the tiny, barely distinguishable figure. Then they went through to the dining room, where their dinner had been waiting hours.

Because it was the last night, they went out after the dinner, and they sat upon one of the concrete-cast benches in the garden. Now the flowers were full in their spring bloom, dim masses in the shadows, but dripping with scent, tea, rambler and red roses, peppermint pinks, tulips, peas all over in haphazard confusion. They were in a well of it, the odor creeping to their heads, while they sat close, bare arms touching. When it was very late, they went in, she to her room after he had held her in his arms and kissed her.

He went back to the sitting room, but Mrs. Vetchen was no longer there. Dropping into the chair she had used, he stared over to the other wall, where the two portraits lay, although now in the darkness they were quite invisible. But he did not need light to see them. Very clearly they hung in his mind: the boy with the soft, womanish lips, so ready to tremble and break into a smile, and the man, his son, broken, and so weary with life that it burned through the brush of a painter who, probably, did his best to earn his fee with a creditable and pleasing piece of portraiture. And the man's sleeve was empty, as his eyes were empty—or perhaps his eyes were but away. John Preswick wondered. He wondered too what had come to the boy that he should beget something so grim and repulsive. Yet it might have been that the boy's lips had changed, that the smile had trembled into being and then gone.

Long into the night John Preswick sat there, even after the negro butler had bolted the doors and extinguished all the lights. When at last he rose to leave, he let himself out quietly, went around the house and through the wide-set trees to the gardener's shack. Old Frank was asleep, his broad animal-snores rocking out as the door opened, and then, as it shut, confining themselves to the space within.

John Preswick took off his clothes and crawled into bed.

8

T
HE
next morning he left; and from Charleston the train took him to a training camp, a city in itself, with row upon row of frame houses that echoed hollowly to the sound of thousands of voices. That was Camp Wadsworth, where for months he was drilled, driven, and spurred into as splendid a young animal as the government could make him; then, when he was deemed in a fit condition to be killed, he and thousands of others boarded trains and after that boats, and came at last to France. But before that, she saw him—many times. In a large, top-heavy, open car, they would drive up, Inez and the little old woman, bringing always baskets of fruit and cake and candies, and great armfuls of flowers cut from the garden. The flowers he never took, but, as they lay in the car, he would look at them with Inez, and then look into her eyes, as to say he understood all too well. In that time while he was at camp the change came about in their attitude towards him, a change he could never entirely comprehend. The old woman said little, but in her eyes was the expression he had seen when she turned from the picture to him. And Inez?—Inez loved him.

As often as they might, they came; and often, when they left, Mrs. Vetchen's eyes would gleam, and she would hold his hand with her thin, blue-veined one. And once, towards the end, he kissed her again.

So it was that the time in camp was more a space between their visits than their visits intervals in camp. Almost daily she wrote to him curious, tender letters, but such letters as a child would write, penned in a large, sprawling script, many words spelt wrong, sentences that were deliciously laughable, punctuation forgotten, and continual reiteration of those phrases he loved, and which he remembered and recomposed, so that they seemed almost to fall from her lips. But all in all, they were letters that a child would write, and, perhaps, for that very reason he loved them more than ever.

For when he looked back he realized that' he had never known another woman or girl who was so much of a child, so small, frail, and outrageously trustful. Sometimes—sometimes when he looked at her, he thought that in her eyes he saw something: a gleam, or an answer to his; and in the times when she had dragged him to the top of Steer's Head, he thought that she saw things he longed for her to see; but, again, he knew that he was mistaken, and in the knowledge there was something of a wistful regret.

Now that he was away, everything bulked more clearly, and he understood how in the time he had spent at the Steer's Head, the world had paused, and how now again it was slowly revolving upon its axis. But he never, quite knew whether he was sorry—whether it would have been better to have stood beneath the oak, she by his side, and looked at the narrow blue strip that told where the sea was—only looked at it. There was a strange ghost, though he told himself Lucille Croyden was dead.

The very last time he saw her, he did not kiss her; but he held her hand, stared down at the palm of it, then turned it over and studied the thin violet threads that marked the path of her blood.

“Good-by, Inez,” he said; and he remembered, long afterward, how close she had stood, and how her face was turned up, lips parted a bit, and how much her eyes desired for him to kiss her. When he recalled her face, it was always that expression and that position, and her eyes were always as then, blue with a deep green shadow, and her cheeks ran with the violet color, sunken, in a manner that would make another appear haggard. Her face started from her hair with terrible suddenness.

That he remembered all the way across, and when he came to France he remembered it still. He saw it in every letter he opened, and at nights, forgetting the sullen rumble, he saw it again.

France was very beautiful where their training camp was, and now he felt to himself that he would have had it this way for a longer time. Thinking of killing, something vital and necessary went out of him, leaving him limp and wet about the brow. Not that he was afraid, for he reasoned to himself that, knowing he would return, there was surely nothing to fear. And he knew he would return. That he never questioned; it was as sure as the skies, as sure as the night that always came. Now and again it occurred to him, with abruptness, that in a way entirely different from any of the others, he looked upon the war—hardly did he know that it was a war; hardly did he know what to expect, nor did he care. The war was not in the tale—not in the tale. And after all, he would think wistfully, it was a tale…. And the long talks upon patriotism and making the world safe for democracy—he heard them, and that was all. But he made a good soldier, for he was intelligent, as such things go, and his body was large and well knit.

Perhaps he knew, in the way that such things are known, that for him the war would be over almost instantly, when he had stood upon a firing-step for exactly twelve minutes. They went up in the night, advancing the last distance beneath a heavy, clouded sky for what seemed miles along a walk of boards, laid upon beams over mud, sunk so deep in some places that they waded through muck half way to their knees. Ahead of them, so near that they could see the light of star shells, the front thundered intermittently. In a single file they walked, crouched, silent, with nothing but the dim forms bulking up ahead to guide them. Occasionally there would be a hissing whine, like the sound of a thousand whips being whirled through the air, and then they would crouch lower, hesitating in their stride, until the concussion came. Once it burst in the line of them ahead; after that they passed by wounded men, invisible, but groaning in the darkness.

It was the most tangible darkness John Preswick had ever experienced; and he thought that if he were to draw his bayonet, he could hew the night into slabs, and cast them aside. About the night, he thought, and about the garden, and about the strip of water that could be seen from the top of the Steer's Head; he hardly heard the cries of dying men. He was aware of several other things: of the jointed movements required to fix bayonets, of the position of his gas mask and how he would adjust it, if the need came, of the swift motion that would fling a new clip into his rifle; he was aware of these because they had become part of him, instinctive as walking and desiring food. The helmet upon his head was heavy.

Into a trench, crumbling and only waist high, they came, and moved along it, crouching low. It joined another and deeper trench at right angles, and, turning, they took their way down it. The night was black as a sea of ink, but their sleeves brushed forms which they could just make out, silent forms pressed to the side of the trench, forms that hissed with breath, but were otherwise dead.

It seemed to John Preswick that for hours he had been making his way through that trench, while it turned and twisted until all his sense of direction was lost, while the growling of the front grew ever nearer and louder. At times, when they had to squeeze past, he felt the accouterments of other men, heard the clank of arms, or felt his elbow dart into flesh. Always there was the hoarse breathing, the muck under their feet, and the foul stench which he had come to know exudes from a decaying carcass.

Whenever a shell burst, they would break their stride, crouch, and sigh afterwards. Once a globule of mud had been flung into his face, partly in his half-open mouth. Walking, he wiped it away with the back of his palm, spitting again and again to remove the harsh particles. Once he tread full upon a yielding body, the, thought coming to him that all those before him had tread upon that same body, and that all those after him would do likewise, until form and expression were stamped out of it, until every bone was crushed.

Now the trench was broader and higher, there being a firing-step upon which silent sentinels crouched, each turning to gaze at the snake-like, stooping, advancing line. He wondered whether they were French, or British, or American. So dark it was that he could not tell, and they spoke not at all.

Once more they turned before the signal to halt was given; then, almost as they stopped, the world before them broke into a thundering to make the noise of before sound like the chattering of children. As they paused, another line was passing in the opposite direction, a file of ghosts. Officers thrust their way through, calling orders, striving to make themselves heard above the din.

Until the world appeared ready to burst apart, the roaring increased, concussions coming so fast upon one another that their sound blended. And the whine of shells rose in crescendo. A whistle sounded. Incredible confusion between the two passing lines. The order was given to mount the firing-step and fix bayonets. More confusion from the line passing in the other direction. Hoarse curses.

His head was just above the parapet. Before him the darkness was broken by jagged edges of flame, interspersed with smaller pinpoints; shells were bursting in quick regularity; and the noise rocked against his ears until he was forced to open his mouth to ease the pressure. Forward upon the bags lay his rifle.

Twice dirt was thrown in his face, but he did not bother now to brush it away. He had a dull headache, and he thought it curious he should notice it now and here. An elbow brushed his arm, and he knew, as in a dream, that it was Rivelo, the corporal.

Then two star-shells floated simultaneously into the air, hung there, and descended in a shower of white light. Beneath, he saw a long, wavering line of shapeless forms, and, somehow, he realized they were coming toward him. A whistle shrilled out, another; and then, upon either side of him, like fire feeding upon dry and brown pine brush, a crackling burst out. There was a continual illumination from the star-shells now; he could see the line shiver; then it was all broken apart, with only a single man here and there; and out of the night behind it another line rose, closing up the gaps; the crackling continued in his ears, and again he saw the line break apart; and yet another rose; it was like a dream, line after line coming from the night and then crumpling to the ground. At his ear a machine gun was chattering, and the corporal's fire was bursting almost in his face; suddenly it came to him that he had not yet discharged his rifle.

But how could he, with the fascination of those rising and falling lines in his eyes? Even as he thought of it, the world tore itself apart, and he was taken up and flung with terrific force to the opposite wall of the trench. With his back he struck; for a moment he hung there pressed to the dirt; then, with tantalizing slowness, he slid to the mud at the bottom, rolling over, and came to rest upon his side—his cheek, ear, and one eye buried in the muck. One arm was twisted entirely beneath him, and he was unable to stir it.” However, he could move the lowest joints of both his feet.

Attempting to raise his face from the mud, he found his efforts futile, and he contented himself with closing the eye more tightly. Except for a heavy throbbing at the back of his head, his mind was clear, being as well aware as before of everything going on about him. But he could not move any part of him other than the bottom joints of his feet. Where the hurt was, he did not know, although the entire arm twisted beneath him burnt with pain. In being thrown against the wall of the trench, all the breath had been knocked out of him; now he breathed with deep, rending gasps. He imagined that he was sinking deeper and deeper into the mud, but, strangely, he did not care. Something he had of the sense of rest that comes with crawling beneath covers and burying one's head in a pillow. Almost did he feel like smiling.