I'm most awfully touched at Dad and Mummy wanting to publish mine. Here they all are—just as I wrote them, in our billet, at night or in the early morning, when the others were sleeping and I wasn't. I don't know whether they're bad or good; I haven't had time to think about them. It all seems so incredibly far away. Even last week seems far away. You go on so fast here.

I'd like Ellis and Monier-Owen to see them and to weed out the bad ones. But you mustn't ask them to do anything. They haven't time, either. I think you and Dorothy and Dad will manage it all right among you. If you don't I shan't much care.

Of course I'm glad that they've taken you on at the Hampstead Hospital, if it makes you happier to nurse. And I'm glad Dad put his foot down on your going to Vera. She gave you up to my people and she can't take you back now. I'm sorry for her though; so is he.

Have I had any adventures "by myself"? Only two. (I've given up what Mother calls my "not wanting to go to the party.") One came off in "No Man's Land" the other night. I went out with a "party" and came back by myself—unless you count a damaged Tommy hanging on to me. It began in pleasurable excitement and ended in some perturbation, for I had to get him in under cover somehow, and my responsibility weighed on me—so did he. The other was ages ago in a German trench. I was by myself, because I'd gone in too quick, and the "party" behind me took the wrong turning. I did manage to squeeze a chilly excitement out of going on alone. Then I bumped up against a fat German officer and his revolver. That really was an exquisite moment, and I was beast enough to be glad I had it all to myself. It meant a bag of fifteen prisoners—all my own. But that was nothing; they'd have surrendered to a mouse. There was no reason why they shouldn't, because I'd fired first and there was no more officer to play up to.

But the things you don't do by yourself are a long way the best. Nothing—not even poetry—can beat an infantry charge when you're leading it. That's because of your men. It feels as if you were drawing them all up after you. Of course you aren't. They're coming on their own, and you're simply nothing, only a little unimportant part of them—even when you're feeling as if you were God Almighty.

I'm afraid it does look awfully as if young Vereker were killed. They may hear, you know, in some roundabout way—through the Red Cross, or some of his men. I've written to them.

Love to everybody. Certainly you may kiss Nanna for me, if she'd like it. I wish I liked Waddy more—when you've given him to me.—Always your affectionate,

MICHAEL.

P.S.—I don't sound pleased about the publication; but I am. I can't get over their wanting to do it. I thought they didn't care.

Ronny—I've been such a beast to them—when Father tried to read my stuff—bless him!—and couldn't, I used to wish to God he'd leave it alone. And now I'd give anything to see his dear old paws hanging on to it and twitching with fright, and his eyes slewing round to see if I'm looking at him.

June 14th, 1916. B.E.F., FRANCE.

MY DEAR RONNY,—I'm glad you like them, and I'm glad Father thinks he "understands Michael's poems" this time, and I'm glad they've made Mother and Dorothy feel happier about me—BUT—they must get it out of their heads that they're my "message," or any putrescent thing of that sort. The bare idea of writing a message, or of being supposed to write a message, makes me sick. I know it's beastly of me, but, really I'd rather they weren't published at all, if there's the smallest chance of their being taken that way.

But if Ellis is doing the introduction there isn't the smallest chance. Thank God for Ellis.

There—I've let off all my beastliness.

And now I'll try to answer your letter. Yes; the "ecstasy" in the last two poems is Nicky's ecstasy. And as Ellis says it strikes him as absolutely real, I take it that some of Nicky's "reality" has got through. It's hard on Ellis that he has to take his ecstasy from me, instead of coming out and getting it for himself.

But you and Nicky and Lawrence are right. It is absolutely real. I mean it has to do with absolute reality. With God. It hasn't anything to do with having courage, or not having courage; it's another state of mind altogether. It isn't what Nicky's man said it was—you're not ashamed of it the next day. It isn't excitement; you're not excited. It isn't a tingling of your nerves; they don't tingle. It's all curiously quiet and steady. You remember when you saw Nicky—how everything stood still? And how two times were going on, and you and Nicky were in one time, and Mother was in the other? Well—it's like that. Your body and its nerves aren't in it at all. Your body may be moving violently, with other bodies moving violently round it; but you're still.

But suppose it is your nerves. Why should they tingle at just that particular moment, the moment that makes animals afraid? Why should you be so extraordinarily happy? Why should the moment of extreme danger be always the "exquisite" moment? Why not the moment of safety?

Doesn't it look as if danger were the point of contact with reality, and death the closest point? You're through. Actually you lay hold on eternal life, and you know it.

Another thing—it always comes with that little shock of recognition. It's happened before, and when you get near to it again you know what it is. You keep on wanting to get near it, wanting it to happen again. You may lose it the next minute, but you know. Lawrence knew what it was. Nicky knew.

* * * * *

June 19th.

I'm coming back to it—after that interruption—because I want to get the thing clear. I have to put it down as I feel it; there's no other way. But they mustn't think it's something that only Lawrence and Nicky and I feel. The men feel it too, even when they don't know what it is. And some of them do know.

Of course we shall be accused of glorifying War and telling lies about it. Well—there's a Frenchman who has told the truth, piling up all the horrors, faithfully, remorselessly, magnificently. But he seems to think people oughtn't to write about this War at all unless they show up the infamy of it, as a deterrent, so that no Government can ever start another one. It's a sort of literary "frightfulness." But who is he trying to frighten? Does he imagine that France, or England, or Russia or Belgium, or Serbia, will want to start another war when this is over? And does he suppose that Germany—if we don't beat her—will be deterred by his frightfulness? Germany's arrogance will be satisfied when she knows she's made a Frenchman feel like that about it.

He's got his truth all right. As Morrie would say: "That's War." But a peaceful earthquake can do much the same thing. And if our truth—what we've seen—isn't War, at any rate it's what we've got out of it, it's our "glory," our spiritual compensation for the physical torture, and there would be a sort of infamy in trying to take it from us. It isn't the French Government, or the British that's fighting Germany; it's we—all of us. To insist on the world remembering nothing but these horrors is as if men up to their knees in the filth they're clearing away should complain of each other for standing in it and splashing it about.

The filth of War—and the physical torture—Good God! As if the world was likely to forget it. Any more than we're likely to forget what we know.

You remember because you've known it before and it all hangs together. It's not as if danger were the only point of contact with reality. You get the same ecstasy, the same shock of recognition, and the same utter satisfaction when you see a beautiful thing. At least to me it's like that. You know what Nicky thought it was like. You know what it was like when you used to sit looking and looking at Mother's "tree of Heaven."

It's odd, Ronny, to have gone all your life trying to get reality, trying to get new beauty, trying to get utter satisfaction; to have funked coming out here because you thought it was all obscene ugliness and waste and frustration, and then to come out, and to find what you wanted.

* * * * *

June 25th.

I wrote all that, while I could, because I want to make them see it. It's horrible that Dorothy should think that Drayton's dead and that Mother should think that Nicky's dead, when they wouldn't, if they really knew. If they don't believe Lawrence or me, can't they believe Nicky? I'm only saying what he said. But I can't write to them about it because they make me shy, and I'm afraid they'll think I'm only gassing, or "making poetry"—as if poetry wasn't the most real thing there is!

If anybody can make them see it, you can.—Always your affectionate,

MICHAEL.



XXV

Anthony was going into the house to take back the key of the workshop.

He had locked the door of the workshop a year ago, after Nicky's death, and had not opened it again until to-day. This afternoon in the orchard he had seen that the props of the old apple-tree were broken and he had thought that he would like to make new ones, and the wood was in the workshop.

Everything in there was as it had been when Nicky finished with his Moving Fortress. The brass and steel filings lay in a heap under the lathe, the handle was tilted at the point where he had left it; pits in the saw-dust showed where his feet had stood. His overalls hung over the bench where he had slipped them off.

Anthony had sat down on the bench and had looked at these things with remembrance and foreboding. He thought of Nicky and of Nicky's pleasure and excitement over the unpacking of his first lathe—the one he had begged for for his birthday—and of his own pleasure and excitement as he watched his boy handling it and showing him so cleverly how it worked. It stood there still in the corner. Nicky had given it to Veronica. He had taught her how to use it. And Anthony thought of Veronica when she was little; he saw Nicky taking care of her, teaching her to run and ride and play games. And he remembered what Veronica's mother had said to him and Frances: "Wait till Nicky has children of his own."

He thought of John. John had volunteered three times and had been three times rejected. And now conscription had got him. He had to appear before the Board of Examiners that afternoon. He might be rejected again. But the standard was not so exacting as it had been—John might be taken.

He thought of his business—John's business and his, and Bartie's. Those big Government contracts had more than saved them. They were making tons of money out of the War. Even when the Government cut down their profits; even when they had given more than half they made to the War funds, the fact remained that they were living on the War. Bartie, without a wife or children, was appallingly rich.

If John were taken. If John were killed—

If Michael died—

Michael had been reported seriously wounded.

He had thought then of Michael. And he had not been able to bear thinking any more. He had got up and left the workshop, locking the door behind him, forgetting what he had gone in for; and he had taken the key back to the house. He kept it in what his children used to call the secret drawer of his bureau. It lay there with Nicky's last letter of June, 1915, and a slab of coromandel wood.

It was when he was going into the house with the key that John met him.

"Have they taken you?"

"Yes."

John's face was hard and white. They went together into Anthony's room.

"It's what you wanted," Anthony said.

"Of course it's what I wanted. I want it more than ever now.

"The wire's come, Father. Mother opened it."

* * * * *

It was five days now since they had heard that Michael had died of his wounds. Frances was in Michael's room. She was waiting for Dorothea and Veronica to help her to find his papers. It was eight o'clock in the evening, and they had to be sorted and laid out ready for Morton Ellis to look over them to-morrow. To-morrow Morton Ellis would come, and he would take them away.

The doors of Michael's and of Nicky's rooms were always kept shut; Frances knew that, if she were to open the door on the other side of the corridor and look in, every thing in Nicky's room would welcome her with tenderness even while it inflicted its unique and separate wound. But Michael's room was bare and silent. He had cleared everything away out of her sight last year before he went. The very books on the shelves repudiated her; reminded her that she had never understood him, that he had always escaped her. His room kept his secret, and she felt afraid and abashed in it, knowing herself an intruder. Presently all that was most precious in it would be taken from her and given over to a stranger whom he had never liked.

Her mind turned and fastened on one object—the stiff, naked wooden chair standing in its place before the oak table by the window. She remembered how she had come to Michael there and found him writing at his table, and how she had talked to him as though he had been a shirker and a coward.

She had borne Nicky's death. But she could not bear Michael's. She stood there in his room, staring, hypnotized by her memory. She heard Dorothea come in and go out again. And then Veronica came in.

She turned to Veronica to help her.

She clung to Veronica and was jealous of her. Veronica had not come between her and Nicky as long as he was alive, but now that he was dead she came between them. She came between her and Michael too. Michael's mind had always been beyond her; she could only reach it through Veronica and through Veronica's secret. Her mind clutched at Veronica's secret, and flung it away as useless, and returned, clutching at it again.

It was as if Veronica held the souls of Michael and Nicholas in her hands. She offered her the souls of her dead sons. She was the mediator between her and their souls.

"I could bear it, Veronica, if I hadn't made him go. I came to him, here, in this room, and bullied him till he went. I said horrible things to him—that he must have remembered.

"He wasn't like Nicky—it was infinitely worse for him. And I was cruel to him. I had no pity. I drove him out—to be killed.

"And I simply cannot bear it."

"But—he didn't go then. He waited till—till he was free. If anybody could have made him, Nicky could. But it wasn't even Nicky. It was himself."

"If he'd been killed as Nicky was—but to die like that, in the hospital—of those horrible wounds."

"He was leading a charge, just as Nicky was. And you know he was happy, just as Nicky was. Every line he's written shows that he was happy."

"It only shows that they were both full of life, that they loved their life and wanted to live.

"It's no use, Ronny, you're saying you know they're there. I don't. I'd give anything to believe it. And yet it wouldn't be a bit of good if I did. I don't want them all changed into something spiritual that I shouldn't know if it was there. I want their bodies with me just as they used to be. I want to hear them and touch them, and see them come in in their old clothes.

"To see Nicky standing on the hearthrug with Timmy in his arms. I want things like that, Ronny. Even if you're right, it's all clean gone."

Her lips tightened.

"I'm talking as if I was, the only one. But I know it's worse for you, Ronny. I had them all those years. And I've got Anthony. You've had nothing but your poor three days."

Veronica thought: "How can I tell her that I've got more than she thinks? It's awful that I should have what she hasn't." She was ashamed and beaten before this irreparable, mortal grief.

"And it's worse," Frances said, "for the wretched mothers whose sons haven't fought."

For her pride rose in her again—the pride that uplifted her supernaturally when Nicky died.

"You mustn't think I grudge them. I don't. I don't even grudge John."

The silence of Michael's room sank into them, it weighed on their hearts and they were afraid of each other's voices. Frances was glad when Dorothy came and they could begin their work there.

But Michael had not left them much to do. They found his papers all in one drawer of his writing-table, sorted and packed and labelled, ready for Morton Ellis to take away. One sealed envelope lay in a place by itself. Frances thought: "He didn't want any of us to touch his things."

Then she saw Veronica's name on the sealed envelope. She was glad when Veronica left them and went to her hospital.

And when she was gone she wanted her back again.

"I wish I hadn't spoken that way to Veronica," she said.

"She won't mind. She knows you couldn't help it."

"I could, Dorothy, if I wasn't jealous of her. I mean I'm jealous of her certainty. If I had it, too, I shouldn't be jealous."

"She wants you to have it. She's trying to give it you.

"Mother—how do we know she isn't right? Nicky said she was. And Michael said Nicky was right.

"If it had been only Nicky—he might have got it from Veronica. But Michael never got things from anybody. And you do know things in queer ways. Even I do. At least I did once—when I was in prison. I knew something tremendous was going to happen. I saw it, or felt it, or something. I won't swear I knew it was the War. I don't suppose I did. But I knew Frank was all mixed up with it. And it was the most awfully real thing. You couldn't go back on it, or get behind it. It was as if I'd seen that he and Lawrence and Nicky and Michael and all of them would die in it to save the whole world. Like Christ, only that they really did die and the whole world was saved. There was nothing futile about it."

"Well—?"

"Well, they might see their real thing the same way—in a flash. Aren't they a thousand times more likely to know than we are? What right have we—sitting here safe—to say it isn't when they say it is?"

"But—if there's anything in it—why can't I see it as well as you and Veronica? After all, I'm their mother."

"Perhaps that's why it takes you longer, Mummy. You think of their bodies more than we do, because they were part of your body. Their souls, or whatever it is, aren't as real to you just at first."

"I see," said Frances, bitterly. "You've only got to be a mother, and give your children your flesh and blood, to be sure of their souls going from you and somebody else getting them."

"That's the price you pay for being mothers."

"Was Frank's soul ever more real to you, Dorothy?"

"Yes. It was once—for just one minute. The night he went away. That's another queer thing that happened."

"It didn't satisfy you, darling, did it?"

"Of course it didn't satisfy me. I want more and more of it. Not just flashes."

"You say it's the price we pay for being mothers. Yet if Veronica had had a child—"

"You needn't be so sorry for Veronica."

"I'm not. It's you I'm sorriest for. You've had nothing. From beginning to end you had nothing.

"I might at least have seen that you had it in the beginning."

"You, Mummy?"

"Yes. Me. You shall have it now. Unless you want to leave me."

"I wouldn't leave you for the world, Mummy ducky. Only you must let me work always and all the time."

"Let you? I'll let you do what you like, my dear."

"You always have let me, haven't you?"

"It was the least I could do."

"Poor Mummy, did you think you had to make up because you cared for them more than me?"

"I wonder," said Frances, thoughtfully, "if I did."

"Of course. Of course you did. Who wouldn't?"

"I never meant you to know it, Dorothy."

"Of course I knew it. I must have known it ever since Michael was born. I knew you couldn't help it. You had to. Even when I was a tiresome kid I knew you had to. It was natural."

"Natural or unnatural, many girls have hated their mothers for less. You've been very big and generous.

"Perhaps—if you'd been little and weak—but you were always such an independent thing. I used to think you didn't want me."

"I wanted you a lot more than you thought. But, you see, I've learned to do without."

She thought: "It's better she should have it straight."

"If you'd think less about me, Mother," she said, "and more about Father—"

"Father?"

"Yes. Father isn't independent—though he looks it. He wants you awfully. He always has wanted you. And he hasn't learned to do without."

"Where is he?"

"He's sitting out there in the garden, all by himself, in the dark, under the tree."

Frances went to him there.

"I wondered whether you would come to me," he said.

"I was doing something for Michael."

"Is it done?"

"Yes. It's done."

* * * * *

Five months passed. It was November now.

In the lane by the side door, Anthony was waiting in his car. Rain was falling, hanging from the trees and falling. Every now and then he looked at his watch.

He had still a quarter of an hour before he need start. But he was not going back into the house. They were all in there saying good-bye to John: old Mrs. Fleming, and Louie and Emmeline and Edith. And Maurice. And his brother Bartie.

The door in the garden wall opened and they came out: the four women in black—the black they still wore for Michael—and the two men.

They all walked slowly up the lane. Anthony could see Bartie's shoulders hunched irritably against the rain. He could see Morrie carrying his sodden, quivering body with care and an exaggerated sobriety. He saw Grannie, going slowly, under the umbrella, very upright and conscious of herself as wonderful and outlasting.

He got down and cranked up his engine.

Then he sat sternly in his car and waited, with his hands on the steering-wheel, ready.

The engine throbbed, impatient for the start.

John came out very quickly and took his seat beside his father. And the car went slowly towards the high road.

Uncle Morrie stood waiting for it by the gate at the top of the lane. As it passed through he straightened himself and put up his hand in a crapulous salute.

The young man smiled at him, saluted, and was gone

THE END