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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
detective, a Government official, a British officer in mufti. From any
window or any roof might come the crack of a sniper’s bullet.
An armoured car passed, with its machine guns poking through
the loop-holes, and people stared at it sullenly or fell back on the
sidewalks as it went by. Many of them ran quickly into side streets
when a lorry full of soldiers came at a rapid speed down the street.
It was covered with a wired cage in which young soldiers wearing
steel hats, like those boys with whom Bertram had crossed, sat with
rifles on their knees, looking down on the crowd in Sackville Street
with unfriendly eyes, smiling ironically when they saw them running.
Dublin in time of Peace, after the Great War! In that former life
of Bertram’s—how many years ago?—it had been a gay, careless old
city, if he remembered well. Young as he was, he had walked up that
very street alone, or hand in hand with Susan, without any fear, or
sense of peril.
Somewhere in the city was Susan now, weeping because the
man she loved was to be hanged on Wednesday morning, which was
next day. He must find her, and stand by her in this time of trouble.
But first he must find Digby.
It was to find Digby that Bertram had come to Dublin. He had a
last wild hope that Digby might help to get a reprieve for Dennis
O’Brien. A word from him to his commanding officer, from that
officer to the Judge Advocate in Dublin Castle, might have some
result. The condemned man was Digby’s brother-in-law, Michael
Pollard’s son-in-law. Surely, surely it might lead to mercy.
Digby was in barracks somewhere on the north side of the city.
Bertram found the place by enquiring of a group of soldiers, halted
with stacked rifles in a street off Fitzwilliam Square. They were
suspicious at first, and would not answer his questions. The sergeant
went so far as to tell him to “clear off, unless he wanted a hole
through his head.” He became civil and informative when Bertram
gave him his card, showing his old rank of major in the British Army.
“Sorry, sir! But we have to be careful. These damned Irish—”
The barracks where Digby was quartered were a good mile away,
and difficult to find. No good asking the passers-by, and quite
dangerous. They didn’t like people who paid friendly visits to British
barracks. He had better be careful, walking alone. Not pleasant to be
shot in the back of the head!
The sergeant drew a little map on the back of an envelope. He
seemed to know Dublin blindfold.
“I’ve searched every street in that district. Two of my lads were
killed in Donegal Street, not two weeks ago. Not a health resort in
that quarter!”
With the map, Bertram found the barracks, and was glad to get
there. As he walked up dirty narrow streets where “washing” was
hanging out of the windows, sullen glances, and sometimes foul
words, greeted him from people lounging in their doorways, or
slouching by. A young girl spat as he passed, as though he were a
living stench. Two youths with caps drawn over their eyes followed
him a little way, scowling when he turned to glance at them, and
searching him with suspicious eyes. They dropped back at a corner
saloon. A frowsy woman sitting on a doorstep smoking a cutty pipe,
while some bare-legged children played about the street, raised her
voice and cursed him.
“May the divils of Hell strike you dead for an English blackguard!”
“I’m as Irish as yourself, mother!” he answered her, not liking the
way in which windows began to open and heads come out, at the
sound of her shrill voice.
“Irish are ye! Then why the divil d’ye look like an English cut-
throat? Holy Mother o’ God! May the English soon be driven into the
sea and all drowned with the spawn of Hell!”
At the barrack gate, the sentry fell back with his bayonet on
guard. At the sight of an unknown civilian he looked thoroughly
scared, and the point of his bayonet trembled.
“It’s all right, my man,” said Bertram, in his best army style. “I’m
Major Bertram Pollard. I’ve come to see my brother, Mr. Digby
Pollard.”
“No civilians allowed, sir,” said the man. “Nobody in civil clothes,”
he added, as a concession to Bertram’s rank.
“Send a message up to the O.C. It’s important.”
The message was sent, and an orderly came down to take him to
Colonel Lavington. It appeared that Digby was out on a search party
and would not be back until the following day.
“Sorry!” said the Colonel pleasantly. “Anything I can do for you,
Major?”
Bertram was utterly depressed by this stroke of evil luck. By the
time Digby came back, O’Brien’s execution would have happened.
He revealed the tragedy of his mission to the Colonel.
“I’m here on a forlorn hope, sir,” he said. “It’s to make a plea for
a man condemned to death. My sister’s husband, Dennis O’Brien.”
Colonel Lavington sat up in his chair, and did not hide his
surprise.
“That man O’Brien! Your brother-in-law?”
“Didn’t my brother Digby tell you?”
“Not a word!”
The Colonel was sympathetic. He made no concealment of his
hatred of the whole show in Ireland.
“I ought not to say so—I’m a Regular, you know!—but the
politicians in England seem to be bungling frightfully. I don’t approve
of these executions. They only inflame passion still further, and make
martyrs of the condemned men. The scenes that go on round the
prison on the morning of execution are hair-raising!”
There was no doubt about Dennis O’Brien’s guilt. He had been
captured in the ambush, after shooting a British officer—poor young
Stewart-MacKey. He’d been tried by Court Martial and condemned to
death for murder. Of course, in a way, it wasn’t murder. The Irish
argued that men captured like that ought to be treated as prisoners
of war. As a soldier, he saw something in that. Still, as long as the
present policy continued, he could not criticise. It was all a dirty
business. Dreadful! Worse than war!
He would ring up the Judge Advocate. He might go as far as
that.
Bertram listened while he “rang up.” He listened with a sense of
Fate in the disjointed words spoken at last over that little instrument
in a white-washed room furnished with a table, two chairs, and a
map of Dublin on the wall.
“Is that the Judge Advocate? Oh, Colonel Lavington speaking.
About that man, Dennis O’Brien, in Mountjoy Prison. Yes, to be
hanged to-morrow morning. Yes. I have his brother-in-law here,
Major Bertram Pollard, son of Michael Pollard, M.P. His brother-in-
law. Yes. You knew? Telegrams from London? Oh, yes, special
report! Well, then, you don’t think—No. Not a chance? Must take
place? Reprieve impossible? I understand, sir. Yes. Yes. Sorry to have
troubled you. Oh, of course. At six o’clock to-morrow? Thanks. Quite
so. Yes, Major Pollard’s with me now. Yes. I’ll explain. Your regrets?
Yes. Thanks again, sir. All right. Good-bye.”
“Not a chance?” asked Bertram.
The Judge Advocate had explained fully. Bertram could hear the
crackle of his voice on the telephone. The Colonel’s words had been
said between long bouts of speech from the Judge Advocate—that
hoarse crackling in the receiver of the instrument.
“No. You understood by my answers? The Judge Advocate has
been in communication with the Chief Secretary about the case. It
has been thoroughly considered. Their decision is definite. Justice
must take its course, and so on. Well! . . . I’m extremely sorry for
your sake, and for your sister’s.”
He was wonderfully courteous, charmingly sympathetic, not at all
a Black and Tan in his political opinions, but it would make no
difference to Dennis O’Brien.
The execution was at six o’clock? Yes, at Mountjoy Prison. There
would be strong guards outside. Sure to be a public demonstration.
Bertram thanked Colonel Lavington, gave him the latest news
about the English Strike, shook hands, and went. His coming to
Ireland had been in vain. He might as well have remained in London,
except for the knowledge that he had done his best, for Susan’s
sake.
He had no idea where his sister was living in the city, and
perhaps it was better so. What could he say to her? How could he
give her any comfort?
 XXXIII
That night he slept a little in his chair in a bedroom of the
Shelbourne Hotel. At four o’clock in the morning he awakened,
cramped and chilled. It was the morning of execution. Something
called to him to go out to Mountjoy Prison, though overnight he had
no such intention. “The scenes that go on round the prison are hair-
raising,” said the Colonel. What kind of scenes? He would go and see
for himself. It would help him to understand the spirit of the Irish
people, the spirit of half his own blood.
He found a jaunting car, and bargained with the jarvey to take
him to the prison.
“They’re hanging Dennis O’Brien,” said the man. “God’s curse on
them!”
All round the prison were strong forces of troops. Several
armoured cars were drawn up, and a search-light was turned on a
dense black crowd of people waiting there through the night, for the
coming of dawn. They were mostly women and young girls, with
shawls over their heads. Some bareheaded, some well-dressed with
hats of the latest style. They were of all classes and ages, and with
them were some priests who moved about among them, leading the
recitation of the Rosary.
Again and again, with endless repetition, the crowd, kneeling on
the cobble-stones, murmured their prayer:
Hail, Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with thee,
. . . . .
. . . . .
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners
Now and at the hour of our death,
Amen
 Between each prayer there rose another sound, the strangest,
most terrible sound of a human kind that Bertram had ever heard
beyond a battlefield. It was the wailing of women. It was like the cry
of the Banshee, as he had imagined it with horror in childhood. It
rose and fell in rhythmic anguish, from all those shawl-covered
women, kneeling with bowed heads, or raising their heads and
hands like a Greek chorus, to the heavens above. The search-light
moved above them, touched their white hands, searched along the
line of upturned faces, seemed to search their souls and reveal their
passion. Between the “decades” of the Rosary, and the wail of the
women, other voices rose, crying out ejaculatory prayers and sacred
names.
“Holy Mother o’ God! . . . Sweet Jesus, have mercy on him! . . .
Christ be with him to the end! . . . Saint Joseph, comfort him! . . .
God help him!”
The soldiers in their shrapnel helmets and field kit stood
motionless. Their helmets—the old “tin hats” of France and Flanders,
—were touched at times by the white finger of light, and their faces
were sharply illumined in those moments. Young, square-jawed,
English faces. Now and again one of them pushed back some one in
the crowd with the butt-end of his rifle, sharply, but without
brutality. An officer passed down their lines, occasionally spoke a
word of command. Bertram was edged amidst a group of women.
When they knelt, he felt himself isolated and too prominent, as the
only man among them, and standing. He decided to kneel, and he
too bowed his head when the prayers rose again for a soul shortly to
be hurled into eternity at the end of a hangman’s rope. Frightful
thought! That man had been a comrade of his in the war. They had
touched hands. Only a few weeks ago he had sat in Bertram’s study
in Holland Street with Susan, his young wife, Bertram’s sister. Now
this!
Holy Mary, Mother o’ God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death,
Amen.
 For the hundredth or thousandth time the words of the Rosary
came from the kneeling crowd. A woman close to Bertram fell all
huddled in a faint on the cold stones. Other women bent over her,
loosened her shawl. A girl was sobbing loudly, with her face in her
hands. A boy—a mere child—ended his prayer with a curse. “To Hell
with England!”
Somewhere, perhaps, in the crowd was Susan, weeping and
praying for her man. When the search-light passed Bertram stared
closely at some of the women’s faces, but did not see his sister,
though more than once his heart gave a thump because he thought
some girl was like her. The light of dawn crept into the sky, above
the prison walls. Presently a silver streak broke through the black
clouds. The crowd perceived it, and because the hour of execution
was coming near, the wail of the women rose louder, with greater
anguish.
“Christ have mercy on him!”
“Lord have mercy on him!”
A bell began to toll. Bertram could see it wagging to and fro in
the turret of a chapel above the prison wall.
A priest stood up on a box, or some small platform, and spoke
some words to the crowd, which Bertram failed to hear. Somewhere
in the crowd a woman shrieked, and then was hushed down. All
heads were bowed, and a dreadful hush came upon them for what
seemed like a long time to Bertram, before the patter of prayers rose
again. The dawn was creeping up, and the sky was grey, and rain
began to fall.
Bertram was conscious of stones cutting into his knees. He was
faint with hunger, and felt a little sick. He found himself trembling,
and a cold sweat broke upon his forehead.
Dennis O’Brien! Susan’s husband!
What year was this? 1921! Nineteen hundred and twenty one
years in the Christian era! After the Great War. . . . Civilisation! . . .
Peace! . . . The Self-Determination of Peoples! . . . Liberty! . . . What
was Joyce doing? . . . What was all this tragedy called Life? . . .
Where was God? . . . Where was Susan in the crowd? . . . Oh,
Christ!
 The silver streak broadened, and the top of the prison wall was
clear cut against the sky.
The bell tolled. A strange deep sigh came from the crowd. The
bell stopped tolling. Above the prison wall a little black square
fluttered.
A priest stood on the box again, and raised his hands, and spoke
some more words. Bertram heard the end of them.
“May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of
God, rest in peace, Amen.”
Another priest took his place.
“He died as a Christian martyr. His last words were, ‘God save
Ireland’!”
A frightful confusion of sound burst forth. No one was kneeling
now. The women had risen to their feet, some wailing, some crying
in shrill, fierce tones, some weeping noisily, some laughing, even, as
one girl near Bertram, with hysteria. Men’s voices sounded among
the women’s.
“God save Ireland! To hell with England! May God curse them for
this day! The bloody tyrants!”
As in a kind of liturgy, prayers answered the curses.
“May his soul rest in peace!”
“Mother of God, pray for him!”
The soldiers were turning back the crowd with their rifles
lengthwise. An officer shouted words of command. An armoured car
moved, driving a line among the women. Bertram was pressed
amidst a living mass, mostly women, forced along with them. The
tress of a woman’s hair, uncoiled in the night, flicked across his face.
Hands grabbed at his shoulders for support. A girl swooned and fell
against him, and he put his arm about her and helped to carry her.
Presently, after a long while, as it seemed, he found himself with
elbow-room, able to walk freely, following separate groups of men
and women. . . .
In Sackville Street he came face to face with Susan. She was
walking with a girl on each side of her, one of whom was Betty
O’Brien, the sister of Dennis, who was hanged. Their clothes were
wet and bedraggled, their hair wild, like all the women who had
waited outside the prison.
“Susan!” said Bertram.
She stared at him without recognition for a moment, and then
faltered forward, and clutched him, and wept with her head against
him. But not for long. Some other passion shook her, not of grief but
rage. She drew back from her brother, and took Betty’s arm.
“Bertram,” she said, in a hoarse voice, “for what has happened
to-day I’ll never forgive England. I’m Sinn Fein to the death. Body
and soul of me for Ireland and liberty!”
In her tear-stained eyes was a wild light. She looked like a
drunken woman of the streets.
A crowd gathered about them, and an English officer came up
and said very politely, “Please pass away. Please don’t make trouble.”
“Get away yourself,” said Betty O’Brien. “Out of Ireland with all
your tyranny!”
“I must ask you to move on,” said the officer.
Bertram tried to induce Susan to give him her address, but she
refused.
“I want to be alone,” she said. “And you’re too English.”
“I’m your brother, and the same old pal,” said Bertram. “I want to
help you, little sister.”
She put her hand on his arm.
“Help me by leaving me. Don’t you understand? I’ve been
through Hell’s torture.”
She turned away from him, down a side street, with Betty and
the other girl, and he did not follow her, because he understood.
That morning in the Shelbourne Hotel, he was called up on the
telephone by Colonel Lavington.
“Is that Major Pollard? Oh, good morning.”
There was a moment’s silence, some hesitation on the telephone.
Then the Colonel spoke again.
“I’m sorry to report bad news. Your brother Digby was killed last
night. A sniper’s bullet on the outskirts of Dublin. A splendid young
man. Most regrettable.”
 Most regrettable! It was the old phrase used in the Great War
when youth was killed. “I regret to report the loss of your gallant
son—”
How was Bertram to face his mother with the news? How was he
going to balance the tragedy of Dennis O’Brien with the tragedy of
Digby Pollard? How was he going to get any sane judgment about
this frightful orgy of death and outrage, hangings and shootings,
prayers and curses and bleeding hearts?
Digby! That kid! A baby only a few years ago, to whom he told
fairy-tales as he lay in bed! Now dead by a sniper’s bullet. What year
of the Christian era? Yes, 1921! Bertram in his room at the
Shelbourne laughed aloud, harshly, and then wept.
 XXXIV
One of the tragic moments of Bertram’s life, which afterwards he
could never remember without a shadow darkening his mind, was
when he entered his father’s house after that visit to Dublin.
His way back had been delayed by the Coal Strike. The fast train
from Holyhead was cancelled, and he had to come by a slow train,
crowded with men thrown out of work by the shutting down of
factories for lack of fuel. “It’s the end of England if this lasts long,”
said one of them, but Bertram thought only of his journey’s end, and
of his meeting with his mother, now that Digby lay dead, with a
sniper’s bullet through his brain.
The news had come to her, he found, through a report in The
Evening News, confirmed, almost immediately, by a telegram to his
father from the Irish Secretary. Mrs. Pollard was in her little sitting-
room when Bertram arrived, and tried to rise from her desk when he
bent and put his arms about her. She didn’t weep very much, except
for one brief agony of tears, but was quite broken. Over and over
again she spoke the name of the dead boy, her last child, and said
many times that she knew he was doomed. She was almost too
weak to walk across her room, and complained that her heart had
gone “queer.”
Bertram carried her up to bed that evening, and sent for a
doctor, who looked grave, and told Bertram that his mother was in a
very feeble state of health, with a pulse far below normal. Nothing
organically wrong, except a cardiac weakness, but general lack of
vitality. She would need constant attention, and he would send a
trained nurse round that night.
Bertram sat by his mother’s side before the nurse came that
evening. She clasped his hand almost like a child afraid to be left
alone in the dark, as once he had held hers. Several times she
seemed to be wandering in her mind, wandering back to the early
days of her motherhood, when her children were young. She
seemed to be worried because Dorothy had torn her frock, and a
little later, told Bertram not to tease Susan.
“Do you hear me—?” she asked suddenly, after a long silence.
Bertram bent over her, and told her that he heard.
“You mustn’t tease little Susan,” she said. “You’re getting a big
boy now.”
Then she fell asleep, still clasping his hand, and he listened to
her breathing which seemed troubled, and sometimes came with a
quick flutter.
Bertram sat cramped in his chair, while the room darkened as the
evening crept on. All his love for his mother moved in him with
poignancy, now that she lay stricken by this last blow of fate. After
his boyhood, when his mother had been all in all to him, she had
become not much more than a beautiful memory. Oxford, the War,
Marriage, had thrust her out of his active interests of life. Weeks had
passed, and he had not given a thought to her.
Now he remembered, and renewed the devotion of his boyhood
to this little woman, so frail, but so brave, till now, who had never
spared herself to give her children health, who had been so patient
with all their woes, and so eager for their happiness. He
remembered when he had been unwell, and she had tip-toed to his
room at night, to feel whether his forehead was “feverish,” to dose
him with little white pills from her homeopathic chest, and send him
to sleep with a few soothing words. They had taken all that for
granted, as children. Now, in manhood, Bertram, sitting by his
mother’s bed, reproached himself at the thought of his ingratitude,
accused himself of selfishness, was sharply touched with, pity,
because of all this little mother of his had suffered in life, and with
anger against life itself.
The War had been an agony to her. She could never understand
the reason for all that massacre. It made her doubt even the
goodness of God, which before she had never doubted. That so
many boys should be killed, for “politics,” as she said, sounded to
her a terrible cruelty, due to some madness which had overtaken the
world. She had submitted, doubtfully and silently, to her husband’s
fierce patriotism, and to Bertram’s excitement when he first enlisted,
and to all the war-fever of England. Perhaps Dorothy’s marriage to a
German, before the War, made her less inclined to desire the
wholesale slaughter of the enemy than many mothers of England.
She felt pity even for the German mothers, to the great annoyance
of Michael Pollard, and the amusement of Bertram in the first ardour
of his hatred for the enemy—quickly quenched after a few weeks of
fighting, when he, too, lost all actual hate for the poor wretches on
the other side of the barbed wire, sitting in mud, as he was sitting,
with the same chance of being blown to bits.
She had rejoiced in the Armistice because it had saved Bertram,
and Digby, who was getting ready to go out, and all other boys of a
fighting world. An enormous burden of anxiety was lifted from her
shoulders by the “Cease Fire” of the guns. She became young in
spirit again, for a time, until gradually she came to suspect that
there was no great security in this peace, and was aware of an orgy
of blood and murder in Ireland, which came very close to her when
Digby became a “Black and Tan.”
Bertram alone there, in her bedroom, in the darkness that closed
about him, thought of all the tragedy of life that hadn’t ended with
the war. It was still claiming its victims, though Peace had come. It
had released human passions everywhere, unchained the primitive
instincts of the human beast, weakened the nerve-power and
controls of civilised life, made a wreck of many lives and hearts.
Death was still busy. Famine and pestilence were ravaging many
peoples. In the one letter he had received from Christy in Russia
there were terrible words.
“Millions are eating nothing but grass and leaves, and not enough
of that,” he wrote. “Typhus is sweeping these people like a scourge.”
England had escaped calamities like that, but unemployment was
creeping up like a dark wave—millions were idle because of the
Strike—and trade was at a standstill. What was the future? “Europe
is dying!” said Anatole France, according to the papers, and Christy
thought so too, in his blacker moods. Did it matter much? What was
life, anyhow, to the individual soul? Not much of a game, except for
a little laughter, some moments of love, some years of illusion! Here
he was, sitting by the bedside of this mother whose children had
gone from her—all but himself—and whose heart was broken by the
death of her last-born in a foul kind of civil war. Susan’s husband had
been hanged. Bertram’s wife had left him. A cheerful kind of family
record! Not worse than in millions of other families in civilised
Europe. Not so bad as in Russia, or Austria, or Poland, according to
reports.
His mother wakened, and spoke to him in a feeble voice.
“Are you there, my dear?”
“Yes, mother.”
She was no longer wandering back to the early years, but
remembered what had happened.
“It’s terrible about Digby.”
“Yes, mother.”
She was silent for a little while, and then spoke again.
“Bertram! Work for Peace. The world is so very cruel, and the
future so dark! Work for peace, my dear. Peace is so beautiful.
Promise me.”
“Promise you what, mother?”
She drew his head down with her weak hands, and as he kissed
her, he heard her whisper the word “Peace.”
That was the last word he heard his mother speak. The nurse
came, and the doctor, and his father was sent for from the House of
Commons, where there was a debate on the Coal Strike, as Bertram
saw by the next day’s papers. It was at some time past midnight
that his father came downstairs and entered his study, where
Bertram was sitting, waiting for the doctor’s latest word about his
mother’s health.
“Is she better?” he asked.
“She’s dead,” said his father.
He lurched a little as he walked across the room, and then sat
heavily in his chair and put his arms down on his desk, and his head
on his arms, and wept with a passion of grief.
It was the first time Bertram had seen him give way to any
emotion, except that of anger, and at the sight of that grief all
hostility to his father, because of so much hardness and intolerance,
was thrust aside by pity. He had loved young Digby best of all his
children, and the boy’s death had struck him a frightful blow, which
only his pride and his freshly-inflamed hatred of Sinn Fein enabled
him to bear with self-control. But his wife’s death, so sudden and so
utterly unexpected, smote him beyond all endurance.
He had been hard with her sometimes, he had made her afraid
of his temper, and many a time she had wept because of his stern
way with “the children,” but she’d never had cause to doubt his love
for her. He had loved her, in spite of all tempers, perhaps because of
it, with what he believed to be never-failing devotion. To him she
was the perfect wife and perfect mother, and perhaps his intense
egotism, his old-fashioned belief in the “mastery” of the husband,
and the submission of the wife, were never shocked by the
knowledge that his wife sometimes described him to her children as
“very trying,” and—regarding Dorothy’s marriage—as “most unjust.”
He had depended on her for his comfort, for his sense of security
in home life, for the thousand little duties which she had done for
him as a daily routine. Now that she had been taken away from him
like this, after Digby had been killed—the boy he had loved best in
the world—he felt fearfully alone, and was broken-hearted.
Bertram put his hand on his father’s shoulder and said: “Courage,
father!”
He remembered the better side of his father’s nature now, the
old days, before politics—the madness in Ireland—had so embittered
their relations. Michael Pollard had not been always harsh. He had
been playful when his children were young; humorous and
comradely at times. Perhaps his children were partly to blame for the
irascibility which had overtaken him in later years. They had been
self-willed, deliberately rebellious of his authority, sarcastic when he
had laid down the law, regarding obedience and discipline,
stubbornly intolerant of his intolerance.
So Bertram thought now, in the presence of this stricken man,
forgetful for a while of his own tremendous loss, his loneliness of
soul, while he watched his father’s agony, and tried to comfort him,
and could not.
 XXXV
It was after his mother’s funeral that Bertram’s courage failed
him. He had a letter from Joyce which put all but the finishing touch
to his sense of abandonment by any kindliness of fate. She wrote to
him from Paris—the Hotel Meurice—where she had gone with Lady
Ottery. She still called him “My dear Bertram,” but her letter did not
warm his soul.
She had been horrified to hear about Digby—that ought to kill his
sympathy with Irish rebels, if anything would. She was also deeply
sorry to hear about Mrs. Pollard’s death, though not surprised, after
so much worry and so much tragedy.
She wished to let him know that Holme Ottery was being bought
by an American, and that, to avoid the unhappiness of seeing the
old house pass into new hands, she and her Mother had gone to
Paris, on the way to Italy—while arrangements were being made by
Alban to warehouse some of the old furniture and family treasures.
Her father had taken a new house in town, rather bigger than
the little old house in John Street.
They had sold the Lely portrait of Rupert Bellairs, and she had
wept to see it go. It was the symbol of the great smash in the family
fortune. England was doomed by a prodigal Government, playing
into the hands of Bolshevism.
One passage in the letter stabbed him.

. . . Kenneth Murless has shown me your articles in The

New World. That one—the first?—called “The Mind of the
Men” made me want to use bad language. No wonder you
refused that offer from General Bellasis! Your words might
have been spouted by a Hyde Park orator on an orange box
to a mob of shifty-eyed hooligans. How can you, Bertram?
How can you? To me it’s incredible, after your war-service!
It’s nothing but rank treason. . . .
 There was something in the letter about the beauty of Paris in
May. Then another line or two about the hatred of France for
Germany, and for the English Liberals who were playing into the
hands of Germany.

. . . The French won’t tolerate any breach of the Treaty.

They will force Germany to pay, or march across the
Rhine and seize her industrial cities. I quite agree with
them. After all, we did win the war, though some people
behave as though it were a shame to do so. . . .

Well, well, Joyce’s views on foreign politics didn’t matter very

much. Some other words in her letter mattered more to him.

Kenneth Murless has come over to Paris in the Embassy

—as First Secretary. I see a good deal of him and he keeps
me amused. When are you going to be sensible and make
a career for yourself? I’m a little tired of being a grass
widow, though as a rest-cure it has done me good! I’m
ready to forget and forgive, if you care to join me here.
Besides, it must be one thing or the other. . . .

Those words were underlined.

At the end of her letter she signed herself “Yours affectionately,”
and Bertram laughed aloud at the words, but not with any
merriment of soul. She had wept when the Lely had gone, not much
when he had gone! . . . Kenneth Murless amused her. She saw a lot
of him. . . . She was ready to forget and forgive!
He wrote a raging letter to her, and then tore it up. He accused
her of damned heartlessness, told her that he would never play her
lap-dog again, reminded her of the things she had said to him at
Holme Ottery, and ended by saying that if Kenneth Murless amused
her so much, she had better make it one thing or the other, as far as
he was concerned. He would be glad to know her decision.
Having written all that, he heard, almost with physical audibility,
the words his mother had spoken to him on her death-bed. “Work
for Peace, Bertram!” She meant peace in Europe, between peoples,
with Ireland, but the spirit of peace must begin in the heart of the
individual, between one and another—even between husband and
wife. He wrote another letter, less violent.

Dear Joyce:
I’m still trying to earn a living. I’m sorry you don’t like
my articles, because they’re the way to that possibility. You
say you’re ready to forget and forgive. That seems to me
hardly good enough. When you tell me you love me again
and want my love, I’ll come to you. I thought that was
understood between us. . . .

He referred to her sympathy with his family afflictions:

. . . Yes, it’s sad about Digby, and mother’s death leaves

me very much alone. . . .

That correspondence with Joyce didn’t seem to alter much in

their relations to each other. It left him in exactly the same situation
spiritually, and physically—a husband “on probation,” with a verdict
of disloyalty against him, but an offer of pardon on recantation of
faith.
No, not good enough! Hopelessly impossible on any basis of self-
respect or decent comradeship, to say nothing of love. Yet tempting
to a man who hated loneliness, and was alone; who, at the very
sight of Joyce’s handwriting, felt the same thrill of passion for her
which had come to him always at the touch of her finger-tips, or the
quick toss of her head, or the whiteness of her neck. It was a
temptation to his weakness, but he was stubborn as well as weak,
and wouldn’t yield to such a miserable compact as this surrender
would mean to his manhood.
He was in a wretched state of mind, which Joyce’s last letter
intensified in wretchedness. Susan’s agony, Digby’s murder, his
mother’s death, his father’s grief and rage—for he was raging now
with more personal passion against the Irish rebels—had smitten
him at a time when Joyce’s desertion would have been enough to
cast him into the blackest depths. It seemed as though God, or fate,
had a special grudge against him, and kicked him when he was
down.
The last blow—a feeble tap, perhaps, yet overpowering for a
while to his moral strength—befell him in a letter from a man named
Heatherdew, into whose hands, as literary agent, Christy had placed
the war-book.

My Dear Major Pollard [he wrote]:

For our friend Christy’s sake, as well as in the usual way
of business, I have spared no trouble in trying to find a
publisher for your book, “The Machine Gun Company,”
which I may say I have read with the greatest interest and
admiration. It has now been to eight publishers and all of
them, without exception, express the opinion that, at the
present time, there is no market for war books. The public,
they say (I think incorrectly) wish to forget the war. My own
opinion is that they are tired of war books which do not go
to the heart of the business which you and I know.
However, I consider it useless to make further effort, and I
therefore return the manuscript, advising you to hold it for
a year or two, when it may have a better chance.

It was a vital disappointment. Bertram had always clung to the

hope of this book as a compensation for his failure to get “a job,” as
a justification, even, of his life. He had put everything that was in
him into this book, his secret agonies and fears, his quality of
courage, his love of England, his understanding of the men, the
ardour that was his in the beginning of war, the joy in comradeship,
the later disillusion, the final disgust.
This was the war as it had passed through his own soul, and
through the souls of all the men he knew. It was the Absolute Truth,
as he had seen it and known it. It was, above all, his defence
against Joyce’s accusations, and the general suspicion of her family
and friends that he was a “slacker,” unpatriotic, and careless of his
country’s honour. Janet Welford had spoken well of it. “It’s good!”
she had said, and had praised it as “almost great.” Well, here it was
back again, soiled by publishers’ readers, scrumpled through the
post, condemned.
Bertram flung it into a drawer of the little old desk where, as a
boy in his father’s house, he had written secret verses, youthful
essays about London life, and, later, love-letters to Joyce Bellairs.
An immense gloom closed down upon his spirit. What was the
use of anything? He had tried hard, and failed utterly, in every way.
He had made a frightful mucker of life. His luck was out. Why kick
against it? Why not face up to the futility of life—for him, anyhow?
He hadn’t even had the decent luck of going out with the men who
had met a bullet or a bit of shell. Those things had passed him by,
though he hadn’t dodged them. That was a decent way of death,
and honourable, the easiest way out of all difficulties. Even now, a
bullet would solve a lot of problems, and answer that alternative
which Joyce had put: “It must be one thing or the other.” He
wondered if she would weep as much for him as for the Lely portrait
of Rupert Bellairs. She might like the sentiment of being a widow for
a little while. She would look beautiful in her weeds, with a little bit
of white lace under the black round her gold-spun hair, almost as
beautiful as Lady Martock. Kenneth Murless would say all kinds of
consoling things in his gentlemanly way. All her friends would write,
wire, send messages, flowers. The two Russian girls would utter
extravagances in broken English, and the Countess Lydia would
enquire whether Joyce’s husband had died a Bolshevik, or suggest
that he had killed himself at the bidding of Lenin and Trotsky, “who
have agents everywhere, ma chérie!” Well, he would provide a lot of
pleasure to all kinds of people, and end his own misery at the same
time.
He had left his old service revolver in the study at Holland Street.
Quite easy to get, if Edith were still there, as parlour-maid.
Chatty Edith! She would be glad to see him again. He would have
to invent all kinds of lies to explain his absence and his visit, unless
he told her straight out that Joyce had deserted him and he’d come
to find his revolver to blow his brains out. He could hardly do that!
She would scream, or send for the police, or swoon away. Then he
would have to fetch the doctor, or throw water at her, or some
nuisance of that kind.
Anyhow, he could get his revolver. He had killed a German with it
once. That was in a raid near Bullecourt. He remembered the jump
into the German trench, after the long crawl across No-Man’s Land
and the long wait every time a Verrey light went up and he had to lie
doggo trying to look like a sand-bag. The German sentry tried to
stick him with his bayonet, and he shoved the revolver into the
fellow’s face and fired it. It was the only thing to do, but he was
sorry afterwards. He had searched the man’s pockets for letters and
post cards—the Intelligence wanted them for identifying a German
division. They were all letters from a girl named Lisa. She was dying
to see Karl again. She pined for his dear kisses. She was a lonely
little Lisa in Magdeburg. If only the cruel war would end! So, in a
dozen letters, and a score of closely scribbled postcards. He was
sorry he’d killed the fellow stone dead, with that revolver in Holland
Street. Now Karl would be revenged by the same weapon that had
killed him. Ironical that! A sort of Greek fate business.
Bertram took the ’bus from the top of Sloane Street to High
Street, Kensington, and walked up the narrow passage to Holland
Street by the west side of St. Mary Abbot’s. That was where he had
married Joyce. “Isn’t she beautiful?” said the women outside, and he
agreed and thought her the most beautiful thing on earth, and
marvelled at his luck. A little more than a year ago!
Newspaper placards were filled with Strike news.
“Drastic Train Cuts.” “Sensational Scene in House of Commons.”
“Nat Verney States the Miners’ Case.” “No General Strike.”
How trivial was all that nonsense. What would it matter in a
thousand years, or eternity, or to-morrow as far as he was
concerned?
The little house in Holland Street had its blinds pulled down. No
answer came when he rang the bell. No answer when he had
pressed the knob six times. The chatty Edith had gone away, and the
house was abandoned.
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