by Philip Child
“You don’t look a bit different. Yes, you do — you are prettier! … I couldn’t get away to meet you in New York.” The lie brought him back sharply to his dilemma. What a cad I am!
“Orders, I suppose,” murmured Cynthia, smiling at him. “You’re thin, Alastair. You do look glad to see me. You are , aren’t you? Am I not to be kissed?” he kissed her.
“You took me by surprise. You looked so pretty and glad to see me.” … It was easy for him to put off the unpleasant future. He smiled at her admiringly.
“You do look so peaked, poor dear. Alastair, you must have had a wretched time.”
“Pretty beastly. My nerves went back on me a bit, you know. I haven’t really been myself — in a way.”
“Never mind, my dear! I’ll make you forget all that. You’ll see what a good wife I shall be.” She tucked his arm in hers and squeezed it. “You know, I’ve grown up, Alastair. I’m not a child anymore.… But I shan’t talk of that yet. You’ll see, though.… The baggage man wants my trunk checks.”
Alastair’s elation lasted until they were in his motor leaving the station. Still bubbling with pleasure, she began to tell him how she had pulled strings to leave England. “The matron was against it. She pointed out that her son at the front could not come back to England rain or shine, life or death, for any reason at all except for a wound; why should it be any different for me? I said it was entirely different for a woman, that a woman’s place was beside her husband. Then I went to General Simball. He said he supposed that one VAD more or less made no particular difference. He said (here Cynthia blushed) I could come home if I would promise to raise ‘not the devil but a family.’ — those were his exact words.… Why are you silent so, Alastair?”
Now surely, if ever, was the time to tell her. But he could not. Cursing inwardly at his own cowardice and at the hell it opened for him, still he could not get it out. She was so pretty and trusting, and she seemed so fond of him.
She snuggled close to him. “Alastair, I want you to know that I do love you — deeply. Being alone so long and seeing Beatrice’s trouble has made me understand myself better. You’ve been so patient with me. And when I think what a foolish, frightened little soul I must have seemed —” She smiled a little shyly, plucking his sleeve with her fingers. “I want us to have a baby. I’m not afraid anymore — not the least bit. And it will bring us so close to each other that nothing will ever again trouble us that way.”
In that moment Alastair knew for certain that he could never tell her.… He would simply have to steal off with Tessa — like a coward.
“Where are we going?” asked Cynthia.
Alastair flushed and spoke a shade too fast. “To your father’s, dear. You see, we rough it at the camp, there are no married quarters for officers.”
Cynthia said, “Oh!” in a small, deserted tone.
“And you see,” went on Alastair eagerly, “I’d feel mean having you stay at the hotel in the village — which is wretched! — by yourself when I could be with you so seldom. And, you see, I have to be at the camp by Retreat almost every night. And besides, it’s only twenty miles from the camp to Wellington.”
Constraint had risen between them — Cynthia did not know exactly why. They found very little to talk about during the remainder of the ride. They turned onto Galinée Street and came in sight of the Elton house. The car came to a stop with a discordant jerk.
They got out in silence.
Alastair’s behaviour during the next week bewildered Cynthia and made her unhappy. The chief thing that troubled her was that he seemed so unlike himself. He would be almost pathetically glad to see her one moment, and the next he would be moping in the depths of dejection. He was only at ease when they were doing something in a crowd; dancing or going to the theatre. She told herself that Alastair had really been shell-shocked — and of course that accounted for everything.… But she was not convinced.
At last she sought out Fanny Burnet and asked her hesitantly if she saw anything strange about Alastair — not just the effect of his wound exactly, though of course, that would be enough to cause any moodiness. She explained to Fanny diffidently that she didn’t want to worry Alastair by questions when perhaps his nervous condition —”
“Nervous condition, fiddlesticks! Wound, fiddlesticks!” exclaimed practical, downright Fanny. Without mincing words, she told Cynthia exactly what was the matter with Alastair.
“The point is,” she added briskly, “are you going to take it lying down like a nice little nonentity, or do you want him back?”
Cynthia looked at Fanny sharply.
“He’s only partly to blame. He was just — just weak and foolish. It was partly my fault.”
“You do, I see. Well, you’re married to him and that gives you one great advantage. Alastair hasn’t the moral courage to toss away everything and think it well lost for a woman. He’s too fond of thinking well of himself. And for another thing, you’re beautiful and you are more than ten years younger than Tessa. That’s conclusive.… Why don’t you go and see Tessa? She has more character in her little finger than Alastair has in his whole make up. The trouble with Alastair is he is spoilt. Too handsome and charming for his own good. Gilded pup! As for Tessa. Well, the war is bad for women. They want to mix in it too much. I do myself.”
Cynthia remembered with a start of surprise a note she had received from Tessa that morning. “She wrote asking me to have tea with her this afternoon. That’s odd.”
“What’s odd about it? She is a lady, you know. Go, by all means.”
III
“I’m so glad you’ve come, dear,” said Tessa. “We used to be such good friends, and I want to talk to you. Daniel will be so glad to see you, too. He’s here from Washington for the weekend, and of course, he simply had to go at once to his beloved garden and putter round. He’ll be in shortly.”
They sat down in the drawing room and the maid brought in tea. They chatted about things that did not matter.
“It’s nice,” said Tessa at last, “to find that we’re still the same friends we were before you went to England. I often think — don’t you? — that the war makes people live in an abnormal sort of atmosphere, even people like me who have nothing at stake.”
Cynthia suddenly groped for Tessa’s hands. “Oh, Tessa, I’ve been so unhappy!”
“I know, dear. So have I been.… But that’s over now.… Yes, you must have been unhappy. Alastair has been, too. He has needed you terribly.… And now you are here, and it will be all right.… Child! Child! Don’t. You twist my heart!”
Cynthia stood up and dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. She held out her hand. “I’m glad, too, that we are — friends.”
Tessa said in an altered tone: “I am so sorry that Daniel and I can see so little of you. You see, I am going back to Washington with him on Monday.… Say goodbye to Alastair for me in case I don’t see him before we go.”
“But you will see him?”
“If he comes,” said Tessa gravely.
“I think he will.”
When Cynthia got home, she found Alastair there. She composed her voice and said: “Dear, Tessa wrote me a note; she’s going to Washington with Daniel on Monday, and wondered if we would call sometime before she goes.”
“To Washington!”
“Why, yes.”
“Tessa is?”
“Why are you so strange? Please, let’s go. I’m so fond of Tessa.”
In the end, they went because Alastair, once having lacked the courage to tell Cynthia the whole truth, could think of no good reason for not going with her.
When they were near Tessa’s, Cynthia complained of a sudden, blinding headache.
“Let’s go home,” said Alastair eagerly.
“I think it would be better,” agreed Cynthia. “I simply am not
fit to talk to anyone but you. But first, dear, you run into Tessa’s and explain to her.” He agreed readily. With an ironical expression, she watched him go.
When he found Tessa, she was knitting socks — for his own brother, she said. She bent her head over the task as she might have continued to do in the absence of any casual caller.
He sat down, laid his stick on the floor, and bending toward her, took the knitting from her. “Now, Tessa. Please. What does it mean?”
She folded her hands in her lap and met his look honestly, not pretending to misunderstand.
“It means, Alastair, that I am going back to Washington with Daniel — though he doesn’t know it yet.” Her lips twisted in the faint beginning of a bitter smile. “It means, my dear, that you and I are going act like decent folk. You will go back to Cynthia because she loves you and is your wife and because you have loved her and will again — presently.”
It became easy for Alastair to grow indignant. “But that’s just nonsense, Tessa! It doesn’t make sense, at all. You talk as if we two were not in love with each other.”
Tessa realized, with pain, that she would have to quarrel with him. “Well, have we been — really? I am very fond of you … in a way. And I always shall be.… But there is something you ought to know, Alastair.… It is going to be difficult to tell you this.… I’ve been fond of you, and terribly sorry for you, too, but —”
“Have you gone mad?” muttered Alastair.
“I don’t really love you; not enough, anyway.… I know this will wound you, but it must be said.… What I really want more than what you call love, is — I’ve wanted a child of my own.… That is the truth, Alastair.” She looked at him with stricken eyes. “I have been thinking and thinking about it. My dear, I did not want to wound you, but I shall have to. We would be desperately unhappy together. I am not a child. I am ten years older than you.… Alastair, dear, you’ll never forgive me for saying this, but just as I’m not enough of a woman to make us happy, so you are not enough of a man. You wouldn’t be sturdy and loyal enough.”
Alastair said: “Tessa, please look at me.”
She turned to him; her eyes pleaded with him not to make it hard for them.
“Now tell me that what you have just said is true.”
She breathed deeply, then said in a whisper: “It is true.”
He fumbled for his stick and went away without speaking again. He did not look back, and she watched him go, feeling that he took her youth with him.
Alastair went back to the car, and for the first time in his life, his self-esteem was completely punctured; fury struggled with whipped vanity in his mind, and his feelings were in such a turmoil that he quite forgot to feel heartache. He had not yet reached the cleansing mood of disgust with himself.
He got into the car beside Cynthia and put in the clutch with a rasping of gears that made her shudder.
They drove in silence halfway to Wellington. Once, Cynthia said: “If you drive like that, Alastair, we’ll kill someone for certain!” He did not seem to hear her, and she gave it up.
About twenty miles from Wellington, he stopped the car at the side of the road and turned to her. She met his look gravely and he saw that she knew.
“You and I, Cynthia,” he said in a taut voice, “is it any use?”
“Do you want it to be, Alastair?”
He put his arm about her and drew her head to his shoulder. “God! What a cad I’ve been.… And what a blind fool! I do love you, Cynthia. And you are so sweet and good and understanding. I haven’t really been myself since this wretched wound.… Yes. That’s the truth of it. It made me desperate. And you were so far away.”
She sighed. “I’m so weary of it all, Alastair. So very weary.”
“I do love him!” she thought fiercely, “I do. I must! … But, dear God, if something could only wound him as he has wounded me!” At the back of her mind was a fear she would not admit to herself. It should have been Dan. But Alastair was hers. He needed her. She clung to that thought. And there was good in him. Perhaps in time — with life — there would be strength, too. “I won’t look back! Alastair is mine.”
He did not dream of what was passing through her mind.
IV
It was getting too dark to see any longer, and with a sigh of regret, Daniel Thatcher put the garden tools into the wheelbarrow and trundled it into the toolshed underneath the veranda. Then he turned back again into the garden to stroll round it for a last look.
He felt at peace with the world. Tessa, too, he thought, seems to have made her peace with life. She has grown up — that’s it.
Looking from her bedroom window, Tessa saw her husband dawdling in his beloved garden, and she smiled to herself a Gioconda smile.… Poor Daniel! He feels so safe. I haven’t troubled him for so many years now. (And she did feel a little pity for him.)
She felt calm and sure of herself at last; for man, the enemy, is woman’s to do what she will with, when finally she has discovered what she really wants. And that discovery Tessa had made. To create life had become a deep, mystical need of her passionate nature, no longer to be denied.
She opened the window and called to her husband: “Daniel, are you going anywhere this evening?”
“To the library for an hour or so. I want to look up a reference,” came back his voice.
“When you get back, will you come up to my room for a moment, I’ve something to show you and tell you.”
At ten o’clock she heard him coming upstairs. She slipped on her negligee and sat down, quietly waiting. He came in in high good humour. “I have found just the quotation I wanted. It’s been knocking at the back of my mind for weeks. I shall use it with telling effect, with I really think conclusive effect, in the final paragraph of the book. The purport of the quotation is that the things which happen to you mean very little in themselves. But everything depends on what you think about what happens to you. It’s to come in the chapter called ‘Managing One’s Attitude Toward Life.’ … What did you want to show me, Tessa?”
She paused for a moment to give him time to forget about the book. “I want to go back to Washington with you.”
He looked at her in surprise, quite attentive now. “Why, of course, if you want to —”
She went on in the restrained, calm voice of one who has thought out everything that is to be said beforehand: “Daniel, I am at the end of my tether. We seem to mean so little to each other these days. I simply can’t stand it any longer.”
Her husband looked at her incredulously. The last chapter of his book on “Managing One’s Attitude Toward Life” tumbled abruptly into the limbo of wishful thinking. When he had adjusted himself once again to the old, old trouble between them, he pleaded in a panic: “We have talked about that over and over so many times in the past. You know why it is impossible. You know, Tessa, that it would mean your death.”
She stood up and said in the same restrained voice — with the calm of an imperturbable force certain of its aim: “Why should a woman be less willing to risk dying to give a life than a soldier is to take one?”
He stammered: “If you should — if — I would never forgive myself.”
“It isn’t you I’m thinking of this time, Daniel. I am thinking of myself. Why are you so cruel to me?”
“Cruel!”
“All you want of me is that I leave you alone! I can’t stand it, I tell you. I don’t want to grow old and useless, with no one — nothing.”
Daniel remembered, the recollection was too fatally easy, that there was only one thing to do with Tessa when these moods attacked her — to leave her to herself. He turned and began to walk toward the door. But this time she did not allow him to go.
“Daniel, first I have something to show you.… Then you can go — if you wish to.”
He turned again.
> “Open the bureau drawer. The second. Put your hand underneath the linen.… What do you see? … Please, bring it to me.”
He could not move. The colour had fled from his face, and though he opened his lips, he could not speak at first.
He found his voice at last. “Promise me you will never again think of using — this.” He dropped the revolver in his coat pocket.… She knew she had won.
“I promise.… Oh, my dear, I have been so lonely, so utterly miserable. Hold me in your arms, Daniel. Look at me as you used to.”
Chapter Xv
I
During the summer of 1918 Dan Thatcher began to feel fatigued and restless. He no longer thought of the war as an adventure; on the contrary, it seemed to him that he had been detached from his roots and borne on to the waves of a very deep and dangerous sea. In the battery all was flux and the familiar faces changed from month to month; Dolughoff, Currie, Alastair, Tripp, and Charles were gone and new lads had come out to fill their places. Only when one looked at these French peasants within shell range, going about their business, just as they had always done, did one feel that, after all, there was something stable in life.
After the battle they had gone into the line again, though they had not yet rejoined the Canadian Corps. They dug gun pits in the midst of fields not yet churned up and fouled with the detritus of war, and near them were unsplintered trees that soon began to show the first green mist of spring foliage. Actually, they had their mess in a little village a stone’s throw from the battery, a real village with a real skyline, inhabited by real human beings.
At times Dan again felt acutely that first horror of shedding blood, which a good soldier soon learned to repress since he must inflict with indifference on his fellow men injuries that he could not perform on the bodies of dogs and cats without repugnance. He still had perfect confidence in his physical courage. But something, he could not tell what, had shaken him morally and disturbed the single-mindedness of a soldierly point of view. He was at the guns relaying the order to fire from the battery commander’s post. Number One gun, fire! came the command, and it suddenly flashed through Dan’s mind how he was an instrument of fate. “I give the order to fire. If I give it now, the shell might do nothing. If I wait a second, sheer caprice, I might catch a German gun at the crossroads. I might kill a gunner and never know I’d done it.” Possible consequences raying out in all directions occurred to his imagination in a split second of time. For instance, the shock of news of death to a wife causing a miscarriage and a deformed child, who, perhaps growing up unloved in some orphanage becomes a criminal and kills.… “Utterly damn silly train of thought! Unsoldierly! Not the way to look at it. I didn’t start the war, and it’s either me or X over on the German side of the line; one of us gets the other. I take the same chance as he does.” … As if in answer to his thoughts, a whiz-bang fulminated behind the battery, showering them with dollops of mud and sending a splinter that came whirring over their heads to strike one of the gun trunnions with a sharp whang. The men looked at him.
