The Penguin Book of First World War Stories (15 page)

‘He returned to the chart-room. The Northman had lingered behind there; and something subtly different in his bearing, more bold in his blue, glassy stare, induced the Commanding Officer to conclude that the fellow had snatched at the opportunity to take another swig at the bottle he must have had concealed somewhere.

‘He noticed, too, that the Northman on meeting his eyes put on an elaborately surprised expression. At least, it seemed elaborated. Nothing could be trusted. And the Englishman felt himself with astonishing conviction faced by an enormous lie, solid like a wall, with no way round to get at the truth, whose ugly murderous face he seemed to see peeping over at him with a cynical grin.

‘“I dare say,” he began, suddenly, “you are wondering at my proceedings, though I am not detaining you, am I? You wouldn't dare to move in this fog?”

‘“I don't know where I am,” the Northman ejaculated, earnestly. “I really don't.”

‘He looked around as if the very chart-room fittings were strange to him. The Commanding Officer asked him whether he had not seen any unusual objects floating about while he was at sea.

‘“Objects! What objects? We were groping blind in the fog for days.”

‘“We had a few clear intervals,” said the Commanding Officer. “And I'll tell you what we have seen and the conclusion I've come to about it.”

‘He told him in a few words. He heard the sound of a sharp breath indrawn through closed teeth. The Northman with his hand on the table stood absolutely motionless and dumb. He stood as if thunderstruck. Then he produced a fatuous smile.

‘Or at least so it appeared to the Commanding Officer. Was this significant, or of no meaning whatever? He didn't know, he couldn't tell. All the truth had departed out of the world as if drawn in, absorbed in this monstrous villainy this man was – or was not – guilty of.

‘“Shooting's too good for people that conceive neutrality in this pretty way,” remarked the Commanding Officer, after a silence.

‘“Yes, yes, yes,” the Northman assented, hurriedly – then added an unexpected and dreamy-voiced “Perhaps.”

‘Was he pretending to be drunk, or only trying to appear sober? His glance was straight, but it was somewhat glazed. His lips outlined themselves firmly under his yellow moustache.
But they twitched. Did they twitch? And why was he drooping like this in his attitude?

‘“There's no perhaps about it,” pronounced the Commanding Officer sternly.

‘The Northman had straightened himself. And unexpectedly he looked stern, too.

‘“No. But what about the tempters? Better kill that lot off. There's about four, five, six million of them,” he said, grimly; but in a moment changed into a whining key. “But I had better hold my tongue. You have some suspicions.”

‘“No, I've no suspicions,” declared the Commanding Officer.

‘He never faltered. At that moment he had the certitude. The air of the chart-room was thick with guilt and falsehood braving the discovery, defying simple right, common decency, all humanity of feeling, every scruple of conduct.

‘The Northman drew a long breath. “Well, we know that you English are gentlemen. But let us speak the truth. Why should we love you so very much? You haven't done anything to be loved. We don't love the other people, of course. They haven't done anything for that either. A fellow comes along with a bag of gold… I haven't been in Rotterdam my last voyage for nothing.”

‘“You may be able to tell something interesting, then, to our people when you come into port,” interjected the officer.

‘“I might. But you keep some people in your pay at Rotterdam. Let them report. I am a neutral – am I not?… Have you ever seen a poor man on one side and a bag of gold on the other? Of course, I couldn't be tempted. I haven't the nerve for it. Really I haven't. It's nothing to me. I am just talking openly for once.'

‘“Yes. And I am listening to you,” said the Commanding Officer, quietly.

‘The Northman leaned forward over the table. “Now that I know you have no suspicions, I talk. You don't know what a poor man is. I do. I am poor myself. This old ship, she isn't much, and she is mortgaged, too. Bare living, no more. Of course, I wouldn't have the nerve. But a man who has nerve! See. The stuff he takes aboard looks like any other cargo –
packages, barrels, tins, copper tubes – what not. He doesn't see it work. It isn't real to him. But he sees the gold. That's real. Of course, nothing could induce me. I suffer from an internal disease. I would either go crazy from anxiety – or – or – take to drink or something. The risk is too great. Why – ruin!”

‘“It should be death.” The Commanding Officer got up, after this curt declaration, which the other received with a hard stare oddly combined with an uncertain smile. The officer's gorge rose at the atmosphere of murderous complicity which surrounded him, denser, more impenetrable, more acrid than the fog outside.

‘“It's nothing to me,” murmured the Northman, swaying visibly.

‘“Of course not,” assented the Commanding Officer, with a great effort to keep his voice calm and low. The certitude was strong within him. “But I am going to clear all you fellows off this coast at once. And I will begin with you. You must leave in half an hour.”

‘By that time the officer was walking along the deck with the Northman at his elbow.

‘“What! In this fog?” the latter cried out, huskily.

‘“Yes, you will have to go in this fog.”

‘“But I don't know where I am. I really don't.”

‘The Commanding Officer turned round. A sort of fury possessed him. The eyes of the two men met. Those of the Northman expressed a profound amazement.

‘“Oh, you don't know how to get out.” The Commanding Officer spoke with composure, but his heart was beating with anger and dread. “I will give you your course. Steer south-by-east-half-east for about four miles and then you will be clear to haul to the eastward for your port. The weather will clear up before very long.”

‘“Must I? What could induce me? I haven't the nerve.”

‘“And yet you must go. Unless you want to –”

‘“I don't want to,” panted the Northman. “I've enough of it.”

‘The Commanding Officer got over the side. The Northman remained still as if rooted to the deck. Before his boat reached his ship the Commanding Officer heard the steamer beginning
to pick up her anchor. Then, shadowy in the fog, she steamed out on the given course.

‘“Yes,” he said to his officers, “I let him go.”'

‘Listen,' he said, forcibly. ‘That course would lead the Northman straight on a deadly ledge of rock. And the Commanding Officer gave it to him. He steamed out – ran on it – and went down. So he had spoken the truth. He did not know where he was. But it proves nothing. Nothing either way. It may have been the only truth in all his story. And yet… He seems to have been driven out by a menacing stare – nothing more.'

He abandoned all pretence.

‘Yes, I gave that course to him. It seemed to me a supreme test. I believe – no, I don't believe. I don't know. At the time I was certain. They all went down; and I don't know whether I have done stern retribution – or murder; whether I have added to the corpses that litter the bed of the unreadable sea the bodies of men completely innocent or basely guilty. I don't know. I shall never know.'

He rose. The woman on the couch got up and threw her arms round his neck. Her eyes put two gleams in the deep shadow of the room. She knew his passion for truth, his horror of deceit, his humanity.

‘Oh, my poor, poor –'

‘I shall never know,' he repeated, sternly, disengaged himself, pressed her hands to his lips, and went out.

But perhaps the most weird result of all is that I can never stay in a room for long where Tschaikovsky is being played – particularly his ‘Chanson Triste'.
¹
I like Tschaikovsky; yet when the orchestra played ‘Chanson Triste' to-night I simply had to come out. I couldn't stand it any longer. Joan, I could see, was as nearly furious with me as she has ever been since our marriage. She's forgiven me now, for I have told her all about it, shown her the photograph and kept not a single detail back from her… but I could see quite plainly that she did not understand. And I want somebody to understand. Most of all,
of course, I want Dimitri to understand. I'd give ten, twenty years of my life, I believe, if I could only make Dimitri understand.

No, Dimitri was not a woman: a soldier, just a common Bulgar soldier,
²
but with this one supreme and startling difference – that of the men who died in the Great War Dimitri died the worst death of all. And although it was no weapon of mine – either held, directed, or commanded by me – that killed him, I am afraid I was responsible for that death. Of one thing, at least, I am certain: Dimitri thinks I was responsible. The whole tragedy lies in that.

It would be the most foolish, in some ways the most tragic, mistake in the world to suppose that this is just an ordinary war story that I have to relate. I wish it were. If I could only trace one experience similar to mine (as, indeed, I have spent hours and hours browsing over bookstalls trying to find it) I should feel comforted; but nowhere have I been able to discover the vaguest hint of a resemblance. It all happened not far from a town called Dorrain,
³
which is situated at the far end of the valley where the river Struma runs between Bulgaria and Macedonia; but I would rather you immediately forgot those names, and pictured to yourself only the town and the valley – the town a poor, war-battered heap of buildings, and the valley a twenty-miles stretch of country, lying between ranges of hills so high and formidable that the military experts had long since given them up as impregnable. And I would have you imagine that while in the town war is being carried on in the best modern manner – two opposing swarms of rats gradually nibbling into one another's territory – all the warfare that exists in the valley is conducted by small groups of men who creep down from their respective hills in the night-time, wander vaguely about the valley until dawn comes, and then creep weariedly back again. All night long the shriek of the shrapnel and the glare of the Very lights may be hovering over the town; but in the twenty-miles-wide valley the darkness may pass without the sound or the flash of a single rifle shot. And the valley is so strewn with ravines and little clumps of trees, and men are so very scarce there, that a group of men from one range of
hills may pass a group of men from the other, barely a hundred yards away, and never be aware of it.

So I think you may very fairly visualize the scene in which the experience I have to relate to you occurred; and yet I find myself altogether at a loss to convey the feeling of a man suddenly withdrawn from his little rat-hole in the town, and sent roaming about the valley wherever the fancy moved him – the groping, childlike fright of it all, those first few nights, and then, as time wore on, the sweet, civilian scent of liberty that suddenly seemed to breathe over everything. I wish I could convey to you, for instance, only a fraction of the divine joy there was to be had in those secret little pilgrimages to the pomegranate orchard, near the five tall poplar trees; the breathless, perspiring excitement that was to be felt in stealing into those ruined, deserted little villages – deserted, that is, except perhaps by the fellows from the opposite hills. But most of all, I wish I could convey to you something of the sudden sense of awe that fell on me one night, when, entirely alone, and trying to locate a certain fig-tree, I came across a small straw-thatched hut, tucked away in a little ravine I never remembered having seen before.

Softly I crept up to the doorway, waited for a moment to make sure that no sound came from within, and then entered. Marking first that there were no cracks through which the moonlight was piercing, I struck a match and looked anxiously round the room. A small, rickety-looking table, and an equally rickety-looking chair drawn up to it – that was all. Then I noticed that on the table was a small piece of candle, and lying only a foot away from this, a thin, black-bound book – a copy of Rupert Brooke
⁴
with the leaves turned down at the page:

Oh God, this was rich! Who, in the name of all that was wonderful, was the lovesick buffoon in the battalion who stole away into this lonely little straw-thatched hut at nights so that he might the more reflectively read Rupert Brooke? Then I turned to the fly-leaf and read the name: