The Tree of Heaven Part 59

In the morning they read the date cut in the wall above the porch: 1665.

The house was old and bent and grey. Its windows were narrow slits in the stone mullions. It crouched under the dipping boughs of the ash-tree that sheltered it. Inside there was just room for Veronica to stand up.

Nicholas had to stoop or knock his head against the beams. It had only four rooms, two for Nicholas and Veronica, and two for Jean and Suzanne.

And it was rather dark.

But it pleased them. They said it was their apple-tree-house grown up because they were grown up, and keeping strict proportions. You had to crawl into it, and you were only really comfortable sitting or lying down. So they sat outside it, watching old Suzanne through the window as she moved about the house place, cooking Belgian food for them, and old Jean as he worked in the garden.

Veronica loved Jean and Suzanne. She had found out all about them the first morning.

"Only think, Nicky. They're from Termonde, and their house was burnt behind them as they left it. They saw horrors, and their son was killed in the War.

"Yet they're happy and at peace. Almost as if they'd forgotten. He'll plant flowers in his garden."

"They're old, Ronny. And perhaps they were tired already when it happened."

"Yes, that must be it. They're old and tired."

And now it was the last adventure of their last day. They were walking on the slope of Renton Moor that looks over Rathdale towards Greffington Edge. The light from the west poured itself in vivid green down the valley below them, broke itself into purple on Karva Hill to the north above Morfe, and was beaten back in subtle blue and violet from the stone rampart of the Edge.

Nicholas had been developing, in fancy, the strategic resources of the country. Guns on Renton Moor, guns along Greffington Edge, on Sarrack Moor. The raking lines of the hills were straight as if they had been measured with a ruler and then planed.

"Ronny," he said at last, "we've licked 'em in the first round, you and I. The beastly Boche can't do us out of these three days."

"No. We've been absolutely happy. And we'll never forget it. Never."

"Perhaps it was a bit rough on Dad and Mummy, our carting ourselves up here, away from them. But, you see, they don't really mind. They're feeling about it now just as we feel about it. I knew they would."

There had been a letter from Frances saying she was glad they'd gone.

She was so happy thinking how happy they were.

"They're angels, Nicky."

"Aren't they? Simply angels. That's the rotten part of it. I wish--

"I wish I could tell them what I think of them. But you can't, somehow.

It sticks in your throat, that sort of thing."

"You needn't," she said; "they know all right."

She thought: "This is what he wants me to tell them about--afterwards."

"Yes, but--I must have hurt them--hurt them horribly--lots of times. I wish I hadn't.

"But" he went on, "they're funny, you know. Dad actually thought it idiotic of us to do this. He said it would only make it harder for us when I had to go. They don't see that it's just piling it on--going from one jolly adventure to another.

"I'm afraid, though, what he really meant was it was hard on you; because the rest of it's all my show."

"But it isn't all your show, Nicky darling. It's mine, and it's theirs--because we haven't grudged you your adventure."

"That's exactly how I want you to feel about it."

"And they're a.s.suming that I shan't come back. Which, if you come to think of it, is pretty big cheek. They talk, and they think, as though n.o.body ever got through. Whereas I've every intention of getting through and of coming back. I'm the sort of chap who does get through, who does come back."

"And even if I wasn't, if they studied statistics they'd see that it's a thousand chances to one against the Boches getting me--just me out of all the other chaps. As if I was so jolly important.

"No; don't interrupt. Let's get this thing straight while we can.

Supposing--just supposing I didn't get through--didn't come back--supposing I was unlike myself and got killed, I want you to think of _that_, not as a clumsy accident, but just another awfully interesting thing I'd done.

"Because, you see, you might be going to have a baby; and if you took the thing as a shock instead of--of what it probably really is, and went and got cut up about it, you might start the little beggar with a sort of fit, and shake its little nerves up, so that it would be jumpy all its life.

"It ought," said Nicky, "to sit in its little house all quiet and comfy till it's time for it to come out."

He was struck with a sudden, poignant realization of what might be, what probably would be, what ought to be, what he had wanted more than anything, next to Veronica.

"It shall, Nicky, it shall be quiet and comfy."

"If _that_ came off all right," he said, "it would make it up to Mother no end."

"It wouldn't make it up to me."

"You don't know what it would do," he said.

She thought: "I don't want it. I don't want anything but you."

"That's why," he went on, "I'm giving Don as the next of kin--the one they'll wire to; because it won't take him that way; it'll only make him madder to get out and do for them. I'm afraid of you or Mummy or Dad, or Michael being told first."

"It doesn't matter a bit who's _told_ first. I shall _know_ first," she said. "And you needn't be afraid. It won't kill either me or the baby.

If a shock could kill me I should have died long ago."

"When?"

"When you went to Desmond. Then, when I thought I couldn't bear it any longer, something happened."

"What?"

"I don't know. I don't know what it _is_ now; I only know what it does.

It always happens--always--when you want it awfully. And when you're quiet and give yourself up to it."

"It'll happen again."

He listened, frowning a little, not quite at ease, not quite interested; puzzled, as if he had lost her trail; put off, as if something had come between him and her.

"You can make it happen to other people," she was saying; "so that when things get too awful they can bear them. I wanted it to happen to Dorothy when she was in prison, and it did. She said she was absolutely happy there; and that all sorts of queer things came to her. And, Nicky, they were the same queer things that came to me. It was like something getting through to her."