No Hero-This

by Warwick Deeping

  It is a perfect night, and a raid is in progress. I come down from my room, and find the Malaunays in the garden. I place myself beside Pauline. A bomb has fallen somewhere near Beauchamp. We are all looking heavenwards, and Gabrielle, suddenly excited, protests that she can see the ’plane. She is pointing. We can hear the double drone of the engines.

  “Up there, over the beech tree.”

  I do not realize how near I am to La Petite until our arms touch. She does not flinch away. My hand touches hers. Perhaps I make a movement of the fingers, and I feel her fingers in mine. Our hands close in quick, mutual consent.

  Gabrielle is trying to point out to her mother what she insists is an aeroplane.

  “There. Like a great black bird. I wish I had a gun, and could bring it falling, falling. I would like it to fall in flames.”

  But I am conscious of nothing but the hand I hold, and the arm that presses gently against mine, and the little head so very near my shoulder.

  My God, she loves me!

  It is ecstasy and anguish.

  Another bomb falls, and nearer to Le Mesnil. Gabrielle turns sharply, and our two hands slip apart.

  “Do you not think it monstrous, monsieur, to drop bombs on women and children?”

  I say that I know of no words fit to use about the devilries of modern war.

  “And I believed in God, monsieur. I no longer believe.”

  Madame takes Gabrielle by the arm.

  “My child, it is not God, but the Devil.”

  * * *

  I cannot sleep to-night. I sit at my window a long time, thinking. Somewhere in this silent house she, too, may be awake. Is it as wonderful and hopeless to her as it is to me? And yet, somehow, I would not have it otherwise. My fate is not here. This is but a dream dreamed in the month of May, an exquisite phantasy from which I shall awake, in some trench or cellar.

  But I am glad that it has happened like this. So exquisite a thing is not to be soiled by the flesh.

  * * *

  We look at each other differently now, mysteriously and yet with a kind of childlike candour. My eyes love her, and her eyes give me love in return. Do those others realize? Perhaps. Madame is as maternal as ever, and speaks to me almost as though I belonged. Is it that she trusts me? I hope so. Poor Gabrielle is, I think, blind to everything but her own inward stresses. She has had no news, and goes about like a woman whose soul is covered by a dark cloak.

  * * *

  The news has come. We are to leave our Americans at the end of June, and move to some other area to be reformed as a division. I feel both wounded and glad. This dream is becoming too real, and reality cannot be. I have a feeling that she would give all were I to ask for it, but that would be pulling the petals from a rose. I suppose that many men would think me a futile fool, yet in such folly the compassionate beauty of loving is manifest. I want a memory that will not hurt either her, or myself, or that other woman whom I love, and shall always love.

  If Mary knew would she understand and forgive me?

  This is just an exquisite dream compounded of moonlight and apple blossom and the sweet smell of the young year. There is no tarnish in it, no greed, no ugliness.

  I shall love all good things better for having loved this child.

  But I have to tell her, and then I realize that she knows. Of course the whole of Le Mesnil must know that we are to leave them shortly, for orderly-room gossip is not sacrosanct. Gabrielle has heard that her Louis is wounded and in hospital in Paris. She has packed a funny little trunk, put on her Sunday clothes, and rushed off to see him. Madame, Pauline and I are alone together.

  Only once I have been alone with Pauline, on the night I walked back with her from the Crucifix. I want to be alone with her once before I go. I have a feeling that I shall be wise if I speak to her mother.

  I seize my chance when La Petite is busy in the garden, and madame is cooking. I sit down on a chair by the window so that I can watch Pauline.

  “Madame, I have a confession to make to you.”

  She looks at me shrewdly but kindly across her table.

  “Monsieur has been almost like a son to me.”

  That touches me. I get up, go round the table, and kiss her jocund old face.

  “Perhaps, you know.”

  “I have eyes, monsieur.”

  “You will forgive me. Nothing that I can do shall hurt Pauline. It has been like a dream to me. But tell me, is a woman very unhappy when the dream ends?”

  Madame looks at me steadfastly.

  “I think it depends, monsieur, on the man. I am not one of those who quarrel with a good memory. My daughter is young.”

  I ask my question.

  “May I be alone with her once, madame, before I go? You can trust me.”

  She says gently, “Yes, monsieur, I trust you.”

  I want to leave Pauline something as a remembrance. Fairfax is going shopping in Abbeville, and we drive in together. This serene weather still holds, and the beauty of this peaceful country makes me sad. I tell Fairfax that I have a secret commission on my soul.

  “All right, Steevie.”

  I wonder if he knows.

  I find a jeweller’s shop not far from the cathedral. It is a very provincial shop, and I stand searching the window. I cannot give La Petite anything so conventional or obvious as a ring, but I see a little antique cross, amethysts in an old silver setting, and I go in and buy it. It is the kind of thing she can hide in her bosom if she cares to.

  * * *

  My last night. We are all packed up, and ready to take the road early to-morrow.

  Gabrielle has come back, but it is a more gentle and compassionate Gabrielle. I go to my billet after tea. The three Malaunays are in the kitchen. Madame and Gabrielle make some excuse and leave me alone with Pauline.

  She is sitting with her back to the window, and I stand beside her.

  “May I ask you something?”

  She nods at me.

  “Will you go with me to the Crucifix to-night? It is my last night, and sacred.”

  She looks at me steadfastly.

  “Yes, I will go.”

  I take the little cross out of my pocket, and hold it out to her.

  “It is the only thing I can leave you, and a memory.”

  She holds the cross in the palm of her hand, and to it I add a little gold chain I have bought. She fastens the chain to the ring of the cross, slips the chain over her head, and lets the cross slip down under her dress.

  “I will wear it, always.”

  I bend down and kiss her hair.

  It is very dark. We walk up the road holding hands. We come to the cross and stand there. Pauline kneels down and I kneel down beside her. She is very silent and still. Her right hand moves, and I realize that she is making the sign of the cross on her bosom. I, too, make the sign of the cross.

  We rise and walk on to the Bois l’Abbaye. We stand under one of the great black trees. I am trembling, and so is she. I cannot help it, but my arms go round her, and she clings to me.

  “O, my dearest.”

  We kiss, and suddenly she puts her hands gently against me, and I understand. Neither of us can bear much more. I kiss her again on the forehead, take her hand, and we walk back down the road.

  I say, “I shall never forget. If I have given you any pain, my dearest, forgive me.”

  She lets her head rest against my shoulder for a moment.

  “No, such pain is good. I shall always be very proud.”

  XXV

  I am riding alone behind our column through this sweet, clean country, and something sings in me with a blackbird’s note. Exultation and anguish. The beech trees of Le Mesnil are a dim, green cloud behind us.

  I shall never see the place again, nor the farmhouse, nor my little room with its window overlooking the garden, nor the face of Pauline.

  I kissed Madame and Gabrielle, but La Petite and I only touched hands. Her eyes asked me to be merciful; and I, too, was asking for
mercy. My last memory of her will be a glimpse of her standing by the window, large-eyed and pale, and yet with a kind of sheen on her face.

  How strange that I should be glad to go! But I am in harness again, and the war is over yonder, and my dream is past. Nothing can take it from me, nor can it tarnish or wound the reality of those other things and creatures who are dear to me. I am thinking much of Mary as I ride, of the loyalty and tenderness she has always given to me. If I have been anything of a hypocrite, God forgive me. The thing just happened, without my asking for it, or seeking it. And after all, like many men, I might have gone to a brothel, instead of dreaming this unsoiled dream.

  Yes, the war. I feel somehow braced for it now. I have some understanding of how the French have suffered, and that this business is still a crusade. We must fight and endure, for the sake of peace. Even the Germans must desire it as we do, all save the rabid and inexorable old men. We must put Germany down, and then perhaps stretch out a hand and say, “We have all been mad. Let us try to make a new world that shall be without hate and fear, and bombs and gas.”

  * * *

  I am feeling most terribly alone.

  We are in a squalid little village for the night, and my billet is over a butcher’s shop.

  Is Pauline feeling as I am feeling? O, hell, why must these things happen?

  I don’t know why, but the good Finch is being very kind to me, and in the mess the others treat me gently as though I had been ill and am still rather shaky. I make myself talk and laugh, but I suppose I must be looking a rather miserable creature. That is the worst of this community life. Nothing is hidden. One cannot crawl away like a sick beast and hide.

  * * *

  We are back in the St. Omer area, and we have ceased to be the skeleton or shadow of a fighting force.

  I am feeling better.

  I have had a letter from Mary, one of those wise and gentle letters that seem to melt the hot metal in one. May God be merciful to all understanding women. My old self seems to have come back to me, and I realize that I am more than a small boy whimpering at my mother’s knee, and that even there, in Sussex, the roots of my life are planted deep and surely. Peace, and a comrade who can give one peace. This experience seems to have made me realize more profoundly how inevitable and necessary that other love is to me. It is not that I feel guilty. It is as though the essential, human loyalties in me have been renewed.

  * * *

  I wonder if anyone will ever read this journal, and condemn me as the complete egoist and prig?

  * * *

  We have received a reinforcement of some twenty men to replace those lost as prisoners and killed during the March show. The new draft are a rather loutish lot, but the most unprepossessing member of the party is a large, truculent, Hebraic-looking person who tells me aggressively when I interview him that he is here under protest, though his principles have at last condescended to allow him to succour the wounded.

  This is funny. I am glancing through his pay-book, and I address him by name.

  “Do you think that any of us want to be here, Campbell?” And why the Scotch name?

  He looks at me with a kind of heated sulkiness.

  “There is another war coming after this one.”

  “O, what kind of war will that be?”

  “The Class War.”

  “And your principles will allow you to take part in that?”

  “It won’t be a capitalists’ war, Major.”

  Familiar fellow! But I don’t like these new men. They have the sulky and dumb-saucy faces of unregenerate louts. I have an argument with Gibbs on the subject of the lout mind. Gibbs is a pragmatist, with a strong sense of social responsibility, and he believes that it is the duty of a country’s intelligentsia, muscular and otherwise, to go out into the highways and byeways and educate the proletariat. Gibbs, I believe, helps to run a boys’ club at home, and I should say that he makes a splendid cub-master.

  But I confess that I cannot bring myself either to tolerate or to treat the lout mind. Spotty arrogance and loud voices repel me. I may be wrong, but I am made that way.

  Gibbs says, “Look at it this way, Stephen. If we more mature people haven’t the guts to govern, we shall find ourselves submerged by the lout mind.”

  I wonder?

  I have no leanings toward the equality theory. One thing the war has taught me is the essential inequality of man. He differs so enormously in character and potentialities that the cabbage-patch idea is ludicrous. One is confronted by this unlikeness among officers as well as men, and here the opportunity dogma does not hold. We officers have had much the same start in life, and yet we produce Fairfaxes, Hallards, Carlesses, and Mr. Salonica. There are certain men upon whom it is fatal and foolish to rely, and nothing will ever make them reliable. There are men whose endocrine glands seem to have been born lazy.

  Is the social remedy a universal dosing of the unfit and the unreliable with extracts of glandular tissue?

  I think there is something more profoundly mysterious at the back of life than this. Or is it that one’s little ego resents being regarded as a box of chemicals?

  * * *

  The S.-M. comes round to my billet one evening. He has a confidential matter to report. Will I come with him? Of course, but why me?

  He says, “Well, you’ve got such a hold on the men, sir.”

  I thank him, and feel flattered.

  In the summer dusk we make our way to the barn where the men are housed. I hear a voice declaiming. It seems to be blubbering its words like plums out of a paper bag. It is my friend Moses Campbell addressing the men. We stand and listen in the darkness. I don’t quite like this eavesdropping, and I glance at the S.-M. and prepare to move off. After all, men should be allowed free speech.

  But as we walk away sounds of storm and altercation become audible. The audience is responding, and I hear one particular voice becoming bellicose. My name is mentioned, and the orator says something caustic about officers and decorations. The other voice retorts, “ ’Ere, you bloody well come outside. Got any conscientious objection to that? Come on, the boys. Take Ike’s coat off for him.”

  I nod at the S.-M. and we disappear.

  * * *

  Finch has the face of a large Tomcat, excessively pleased with itself, though one that looks a little war-worn. He brings me my early tea, and I hear him whistling as he cleans my boots.

  It is my morning to take the parade.

  Campbell has a black eye, and a very swollen mouth.

  I cannot help pausing and asking him with an air of sympathy, “Campbell, what have you been doing?” He glares at my chin. There is not a sound from the men. The parade is perfect as to steadiness, every face wooden and expressionless. I pass on.

  Later in the day, when Finch is laying out my slacks for dinner I ask him a question.

  “Was it you who biffed Campbell, Finch?”

  “It was, sir.”

  “Thank you. Good for discipline.”

  Finch guffaws.

  “I’ve got a name for him, and it’s stuck.”

  “What’s that, Finch?”

  “The latrine-bucket, sir. But ’e won’t spill himself again on me.”

  Grey skies and rain. There is a soothing quality in this rain, as though it is preparing for us weather fit for the war. May, and fruit blossom and the singing of birds are not for this murder business. They anguish one, and are too tantalizing, and so is the pale face of a girl.

  We are moving up towards Ypres. Rumour has it that Rupprecht of Bavaria is preparing yet another offensive that shall drive us towards the sea. This country seems strange, for places that were somewhat peaceful have now become shabby and sad and tainted with that terror which spreads over the fields like gas. Even the familiar outline of the Mont des Cats has changed, and jagged and spidery roofs tell of destruction.

  We are to go into the line not far from Kemmel, and an American division is to lie behind us in reserve. It would appear that we
are to act as shepherds to the Americans, and that when they have been a little hardened they will take over the line from us. As it is we are a somewhat raw crowd, and the new drafts are very young.

  Fairfax tells me that we are to be the forward ambulance. That is both a compliment and a challenge, but have these three months of sweet sanity and peace slackened my nerves? I feel afraid—more afraid somehow than I have ever felt before.

  The night before we go into the line we are billeted in huts in one of those dreary fields that have been worn bald as to grass. Gibbs, Potter, Carless and myself are together in a hut. It is a warm, muggy, July night, and I cannot get to sleep. My wretched stomach is tense and wide awake.

  About one o’clock a Boche long-range gun starts shelling this area. The stuff is not very near us, but I lie and shiver and sweat. It is abominable and humiliating, this fear, but I am learning that fear does not grow less as the war goes on. It is the slow, gradual, accumulating pressure of fear’s fingers on the throat of man’s soul that breaks him down. But this will not do. I have set myself to finish this war somehow as a man, and the things I have to bear are as nothing compared with what the ordinary infantry sub. has to suffer.

  Those damned shells are coming nearer. I get up, slip a trench coat over my pyjamas and my feet into slippers, and go out. I have no tin-hat or gas-mask. The moon is shining, and even this wretched field has a beauty. I walk round among the huts, and come suddenly upon a group of sergeants very much undressed. The S.-M. is with them.

  They look at me as though I were a ghost.

  “Do you think we ought to get the men up, sir?”

  I stand and listen for a moment, expecting another of those crashes and a geyser of earth and smoke.

  “I rather think he has finished for the night, S.-M.”

  He has. There are no more shells. One of the sergeants offers me a cigarette. Please God that they do not suspect that it was sheer funk that sent me parading in my slippers. As a matter of fact I believe they have credited me with an act of courage. So are mock heroes made.