Summer Will Show

by Sylvia Townsend Warner

  There had been nothing in that moment of revived attention to justify coming to life. Sophia made no further attempts to attend, and when they were halted in a courtyard, she sat down on the pavement, leaned against some one’s legs, and fell asleep.

  When she woke it was morning, the sun already high, the noise of fighting still continuing. She woke with a perfect uncommenting recollection of everything that had happened, and a raging thirst. Others had woken thirsty too. All round her she heard complaints, voices begging for water. Cramped, parched, aching all over, sullen and dull-witted, her only feeling was one of dissatisfaction because there were two facts to which her mind woke unadjusted. One was that it had seemed to her overnight that they had been brought to the courtyard of a massive and stately building; whereas this was no building at all, but the tattered skeleton of a building in demolition, all gaps, and jagged edges, and papery broken walls. The other new aspect of the morning was that her acquaintances of overnight were exchanged for perfect strangers.

  She had to look at them several times to make sure of this. They were exactly the same sort of people as those behind the barricade, wearing that general badge of being pale, underfed, shabby and serious. Here were hands exactly like the hands she had touched, receiving and giving back the guns she loaded — hands scarred and discoloured, with the dirty nails and enlarged dusky knuckles of labour. Here were heads that had gone uncovered in all weathers, the hair strong and coarse like a pelt. There, peering into the world through his dirty spectacles, was just such a timid, short-sighted student as he of overnight, and there was another red-headed boy, and there, tormented with a hiccough, resigned and uncompromising, was Laimable, who had fallen back dead from the barricade.

  So powerful was this weaving between the dead of overnight, the living of the morning, that when she recognised Martin she supposed that the Martin she knew must be dead also; and this impression was the stronger since, happening to turn his head in her direction, he looked at her without any alteration of his harsh and thoughtful visage. Yet that peremptory turn of the head, and those adder-coloured eyes stabbed through her illusion, and she admitted that he, at least, was real and living.

  “You are looking for your friends, no doubt?”

  It was a rather squeaky voice that made this enquiry, one of those voices which, being used seldom, and diffidently, acquire a false note of patronage. It came from the short-sighted student.

  “It is possible that they may be among those who have been shot.”

  Making conversation, he continued,

  “What barricade were you on?”

  “Do you know, I cannot remember the name of the street.”

  “I was on the barricade of the Place Cambrai. Ah! I think it may be our turn now.”

  Suddenly his hand touched hers. It was impossible to guess, so cold was that hand, whether it sought in that contact to reassure or to be reassured.

  “It is curious, isn’t it, how clumsily one’s mind adapts itself to the thought of death?”

  “Very curious, Madame.”

  They were being shouted to their feet, ranged closely together, as though they were inferior exhibits on the back-staging of a flower-show. A sergeant of the Republican Guard reckoned them over with a wagging forefinger. There was one above the reckoning, and with a rapid contemptuous movement of his hand he dismissed him from the group, as though flicking off a grain of dust. The firing-squad marched up and fell into position. Behind them an officer walked to and fro, soaping his hands, staring with a vaguely critical glance at the sky.

  Suddenly he pricked up his ears, became animated, came down from the heavens to the earth.

  “What’s that? What’s that?”

  “Wants a priest, sir. Wants to make his confession.”

  “Certainly! Certainly! A very edifying desire. I could only wish that more of these miserable wretches had such an impulse. Fetch a priest at once.”

  And advancing on the religious young man who, already isolated from his fellows by this movement of piety, was now in tears, the officer remarked with a noble blitheness,

  “Quite right, my poor young fellow! Such a wish I will always grant with pleasure. We do not combat against souls, quite the contrary.

  “Stand at ease,” he added, to the firing-squad. And crossing himself withdrew, to walk to and fro and consider the heavens once again.

  A very awkward pause ensued. The religious young man continued to weep, those on either side of him drew away as much as they could, somebody whistled softly, some one else gave a disapproving cough. Sophia could hear the student beside her grinding his teeth.

  Slowly, his acrid voice most skilfully modulated to the tone of one who, out of courtesy only, seems to be persuading others to an opinion which he knows they hold already, Martin began to speak.

  “Some one calls for a priest; and immediately, at this cautious provision for another life, this invocation of eternity we, who have so little of this life left to us, feel any prolongation of it as an intolerable burden. That seems odd, does it not? Unreasonable, to feel so acutely about so small a fret. If we were to revolt against living, we might well have done so earlier. Our lives have been bitter enough, joyless, imperilled, ignominious, the lives of working-people. We have laboured, and never tasted the fruits of our labours. If we have loved, that love has only compelled us to a more anxious hate. The married man, the man who loves his wife and children, in our class that one love cuts him off from the love of his kind. He sees in his fellows only enemies and supplanters, rivals, who may do him out of a job, outbid him with a lower wage, steal the bread from the mouths of his children.

  “How often we have declared that our lives were intolerable! How much more often, not even troubled to declare it! And yet, having endured such lives, we feel now that it is beyond the resistance of our nerves to endure the delay of five minutes while a priest is sent for. Here we stand, as in our old days we have often enough wished to stand — idle for once, able to stand about in the sun as though it were a holiday. Here we stand as we have wished often enough, too, to stand — on the brink of the grave, our labour and mistrust and weariness almost at an end.

  “But after all, what is this five minutes’ burden? The weight of a husk, of a dead leaf. For our lives are over. What purpose we had — and we had, many of us, a purpose — is taken out of our hands. What we had to do and to say, is said and done. The word is with others now, and our purpose in other hands. And so this weight of time upon us, it is only the weight of a husk, of the dry wisp that remains and withers after the fruit has been gathered, or the seed fallen into the ground. It is no more substantial than that. And really it seems to me that we ought to bear it with more patience.”

  He shook his head, a gentle rebuke. Then his bright eyes perused the faces of the firing-squad, and he continued,

  “But that is how this delay affects us. For you, who are here to execute us, it is probably more tedious, certainly more embarrassing. For this break in the common routine, it lets in a draught of cold air, it gives an inconvenient leisure in which to reflect on this odd business of killing one’s fellow-men, one’s country-men, and people of the same class as oneself, at a word of command. For after all, you and we have much more in common that you and your officer, you and the ruling class whose orders your officer orders you to carry out. That ruling class — you would not marry their daughters, sit at their table. You and they are different nations. And if you reflect on it, you will see that you and they are constantly at war with each other, and have been during all your lives and the lives of your forefathers. But as it is a war in which, so far, they have always won, you have failed to notice that it is a war.

  “And here we wait, face to face, people of the same class, fellow-combatants in this profound war in which, so far, we have never gained a victory — waiting for that word of command at which you kill us. Not that I speak against words of command, to be able to carry out an order is admirable and essential — provided th
at the order does not come from the enemy. But as things are — no! And it seems to me, a prisoner, that you are pretty much prisoners yourselves, and likely, sooner or later, to die very much as we are going to die — blown to bits because some one of the ruling class has ordered it. You are disciplined and courageous prisoners, I grant it. But we have a boast too in our ragged regiment, and it seems to me better than yours. We know what we are dying for, we have fought and will die at our own word of command, not the enemy’s.”

  The priest had been brought, and Martin fell silent, retiring, as the defending counsel might, to listen impassively to the speech of the prosecuting counsel. Professional as the lick of a mother-cat’s tongue the absolution was given, and the officer, hovering in the background, crossed himself more and more devoutly, soaped his hands in an increasing ecstasy of sentiment and grand self-approbation.

  It was over, this satisfying interlude, the soul was saved, and the order to prepare given. Suddenly his eye lighted upon Sophia.

  “I cannot consent to the death of a woman.”

  “Death of a woman!” she cried out furiously. “Death of a woman! And how many women are dead already, and how many more will be, with your consent and complaisance? Dead in besieged towns, and towns taken by storm. Dead in insurrections and massacres. Dead of starvation, dead of the cholera that follows starvation, dead in childbed, dead in the workhouse and the hospital for venereal diseases. You are not the man to boggle at the death of a woman.”

  It seemed to her, and she was glad, that she had screamed this out like a virago of the streets.

  But with a bow he reasserted,

  “I cannot consent to the death of a lady.”

  Bitterly humiliated, she found herself taken out of the rank of the doomed. As she stumbled forward the student leaned after her.

  “I am to tell you that Martin feels great satisfaction to think you will remain alive.”

  While they were untying her hands she heard the words of command, and the volley. Then the priest was at her side, saying something about mercies and thankfulness, and the dangerous state of the streets. She ran out of the courtyard, not glancing behind her.

  She was her own creature again — flipped back into the farewelled world, to fend for herself, sink or swim.

  Martin had not much to congratulate himself upon that she was still alive. Never was there a woman with less heart to live. And maybe I shall be killed yet, she said to herself as a bullet went past her. But there was no conviction in the words. No life so charmed as the life that would be laid down. Creaky doors hang longest.

  Probably I shall live to a profound old age. And people will say of me, “Do you know, old Mrs. Willoughby went through the Revolution of ’48 in Paris?” And some one else will answer, “How extraordinary! One would never think it.”

  With a sleep-walking obstinacy her body was taking her back to the barricade. Murderers go back. And if it comes to that, I may be said to have murdered Caspar. “Do you know, in the year ’48 old Mrs. Willoughby murdered her uncle’s illegitimate son — a boy of fifteen, a poor stupid blackamoor who worshipped the ground she trod on?” “No, really? One would never think it.” “Such a dull old woman. Rather cold-hearted, don’t you think?” This icy pain in her bosom, this pain of a heart becolded, it would go on and on, she supposed, the counterpart to that flowering crimson on Minna’s white muslin gown, that flowering of her warm and generous blood.

  It was difficult to get back. Where there was not fighting, there was ruin — houses gutted, streets impassable. Crowds of people had settled upon the ruins, like bluebottles. She could hear their buzzing voices, their crawling exploring footsteps. People thrust their heads through broken windows, recounting what they had found within, holding out a bloodied rag, a musket, a broken chamber-pot, as testimony.

  She flinched aside from these, wary as a hunted animal. These carrion sight-seers, they might settle on her if she gave them the chance.

  There was the place she sought, and there, too, another crawling inspecting crowd. She tried to drive herself forward, began to sicken and tremble, could not go on. Then she remembered the quiet by-street, the stone-hooded door which had let her in. She made her way back, and found the narrow turning. Above a high stone wall a tree, an aspen, whispered and sighed. Paris was full of trees — all those May-time trees which had waved their vivid greeting to her happiness. And actually she must have seen the aspen on the day when they walked together down the narrow by-street and found the unexpected shop with its romantic name of an old-fashioned provinciality, and bought that remarkably good potted hare; but happy and companioned, she had ignored the aspen tree, sighing then as it sighed now, for from the moment the leaves put out the tree utters its whispering plaint. She had not noticed the tree till now.

  She reached the stone-hooded porch. The door had been broken, and roughly boarded up. Through the gaps in the boarding she could discern the dusky shop, dishevelled and pillaged. She sat down on the step and buried her face in her hands.

  It was nothing out of the way to see a woman in despair. She heard a child’s trotting step go by, never pausing, and heavier footsteps went by too, and did not pause either. Yet when at last a heavy and slippered treading stopped beside her, she thought it better to be left alone, and resolutely hid her face.

  The slippers shuffled as their wearer eased her weight from one leg to another. Sometimes a staybone creaked, petticoats dragged over the cobbles. With these slight movements a smell detached itself, a humble smell, mixed of oil, and yellow soap, and garlic, and calico. At last, sullenly enough, she raised her head, and looked into the face of the stout old woman who had sat on a camp-stool haranguing the young officer.

  “There!”

  Her voice was a sort of soft rumble, her expression compassionate. With her hands folded over her stomach she stood slowly shaking her head, easing her weight from one leg to another.

  “I thought it was you. You aren’t the sort of person one is mistaken about. Well, we didn’t think it would go like this, did we?”

  A sort of cloud, a look of more immediate, more compassionate concern, crossed her face.

  “I suppose you’ve come back about that other poor lady. You were friends, I reckon.”

  Minna dead. On some faces, Sophia, death falls like a fall of snow. Minna sitting up in bed, weeping and munching biscuits. Minna dead.

  “Where ——”

  “She’s not here now, my dear.”

  “What!”

  This lance-thrust of hope jerked her to her feet, sent the echo of her voice, hoarse and shrieking, down the alley.

  “She’s dead, my dear. Don’t let yourself think otherwise. Her body’s gone, but she was dead for certain sure before that. I saw her with my living eyes, and I wouldn’t deceive you.”

  It was as though she were proffering a comfort, the way she insisted that Minna was dead.

  Afterwards, sitting on a small chair in a very small room, and looking at Madame Guy’s enormous bed, Sophia began to think that for all her kindness the old woman was not to be trusted; that for all her protestations she knew, and would conceal, that Minna was still alive.

  Instantly she began to tremble again, to drown in an icy faintness. For, having been so sure of dying, now to return to life and uncertainty was an agony like the bodily agony of the thawing-out of a frostbitten limb. “And I shan’t come back till I hear you having a good cry,” the old woman had said, “for that’s what you need.” Not a tear had come. But for all that Madame Guy presently walked in, her survivor’s gregariousness too strong for her good resolutions. I will let her talk, thought Sophia. She’s the sort that lets out the truth by accident.

  Watchful and antagonised, she listened to the old woman’s babble, that flowed on innocent as a brook. But just as a brook may flow, innocent and tinkling, and through the limpidity of its waters one may see on the bed of the stream broken tins, a foul old boot, the jawbone of a dead animal, so under Madame Guy’s guileless cha
tter was death, misery and exploitation. As she said, she had seen a lot of trouble in her time.

  “And it’s a terrible thing, you know, to see your good neighbours killed and chopped about, or taken off to prison to be transported maybe. Particularly at my time of life. For though new families may move in — you may be sure of that, for as Jesus said, The poor you shall have always with you, and living in a poor neighbourhood like this, I can vouch for the truth of it — I shan’t be able to feel the same interest in them, I’m too old now to make new friends.

  “And another thing I can’t get over, is taking those boys and teaching them to act like so many young demons. When I saw them scrambling over the barricade last night like wicked monkeys it came over me like a thunderclap that the rich have no mortal right or justice to turn boys into demons just because boys are poor and plentiful. Your poor friend, too, dead and gone! I could see she was a kind-hearted lady. Stuck through by one of them, wasn’t she?”

  “I tried to kill him. Did I?”

  “I can’t tell you, my dear. I was running, by then. And don’t my legs know it this morning? But I dare say you did. They carried off several of their dead, so I hear. They didn’t carry off our dead, though. Left the poor bodies to lie in the street till their own folk came and found them.”

  “Where is her body, then?”

  “They took it, they took it — maybe because she was a lady. Now, my dear, don’t you go and get it into your head that she is still alive. She was dead before they took her, I can swear to it, I saw her lying dead with my own eyes.”

  “But you were running away ... .Why do you lie to me like this? She is alive and you know it.”

  Madame Guy turned pale. Tears began to run down her large face.

  “Oh, this world of misery! One can do nothing to better it.”

  That was all she would say, offering her great wet countenance to Sophia’s furious questions as to a succession of blows. At last she turned and walked out of the room.