VI

It was to this quietness and stillness that the man in the spare room awoke. Lying on his back with his arms outside the coverlet, he stretched himself, yawned, and opened his eyes. A series of vague impressions presented themselves at once to his half - awakened consciousness—daylight,—nice room—very comfortable bed—rather too warm—oh Lord, yes! Much too warm—hot!

He pushed back the bed-clothes, sat up, and put his hands to his head with the instinctive movement of a man about to run his fingers through his hair. His hands touched a bandage, and at the touch he came broad awake. A bandage—there was certainly a bandage about his head. He felt it gingerly, and was reassured. His head felt all right, a little wobbly perhaps, but nothing more. Come to think of it, he remembered being hit. They had gone up, struck that beastly fog, and lost their bearings. The Lord knows where they had got to or who was firing. But he remembered being hit. His hand went up again and fingered the bandage over his right temple. That was all. He couldn’t remember past that, except for an interminable, long dream in which he was always being ordered about and doing all sorts of things that he’d never really done in his life.

He drew his feet up and locked his arms about his knees. Very queer things dreams. You’d expect a man to dream about things he knew something about; and here he’d been dreaming miles and miles of an endless dream about hoeing roots and ploughing a long, narrow field set round with trees. Queerest of all, in his dream he had been a German. Crazy, absolutely. But there it was.

He began to remember all sorts of odd details out of the dream. Children throwing stones at him, and calling him “Stummer Anton,” “Dummer Anton”—German children calling out at him with German words. But—he didn’t know any German. All his muscles stiffened suddenly. For a moment he did not breathe. He did not know any German; but in his dream the children called him “Dummer Anton” “Stummer Anton”—and he understood what they said. They said “Stupid Anton,” “Dumb Anton,” and he understood them, just as he understood Tante Anna when she spoke kindly to him, and Josef when he grumbled. Tante Anna and Josef belonged to the dream, the long, long dream in which he was not himself at all, but Anton—Anton Blum. It was the very dickens of a queer start. Extraordinarily detailed the whole thing; nothing exciting about it; just an every-day dullness, going on, and on, and on. Why, he remembered the very clothes that he wore in the dream, the patches on his boots, and a neat, square darn on his left shirtsleeve——

He stretched and yawned again, then with a sudden movement pushed the bed-clothes right back and swung his legs out of bed. He sat on the edge of the bed, blinking hard and staring at his own bare knees. They had put him to bed in his shirt. He picked up the hem and fingered it—blue and white checked stuff, very old and faded. Good Lord! He’d never had a shirt like that in his life. Yes, he had—not really, but in the dream. Very, very slowly he lifted his right hand and felt for the darn on the other sleeve. It was there, neat and fine, just above the left elbow.

He sprang to his feet frowning. Where in the world was he? What was this house? Not a hospital, for there was a carpet on the floor and curtains at the windows. He must have been knocked out, and then someone had picked him up, carried him off to an expensively furnished house, and put him to bed in some other fellow’s shirt. The whole thing got queerer every moment.

He crossed the room and stood by the window looking out. What he saw told him very little—a narrow strip of garden, a few bare trees, and a grey sky over all; other trees to right and left, other town gardens.

He was in a town. What town? And how long had he been here? How long was it since he had been hit? It was the fifteenth of November when they had gone up—a topping morning before they ran into the fog. He looked again at the trees in the narrow garden. To the eye of a boy brought up in the country, they did not look like November trees. Bare, yes—and brown; but the buds were swelling on them, and the brown had the warm, purplish tinge that comes with the rising sap.

He turned abruptly, and looked about the room. There was a wash-stand, dressing-table, chest of drawers—all the usual furniture of a comfortable bedroom. A couple of steps took him to the dressing-table. He tilted the glass and, as he did so, saw his own image in it flicker and blur. He gripped the table so hard that the edge came near to cutting his hands. The glass, tipped back, showed him, not himself, but a figure unfamiliar and repulsive, heavy-shouldered, with a forward stoop of the head, shaggy-haired, and bearded almost to the eyes. The bandage that crossed the forehead alone told him that what he saw was himself. Months—it must have been months since he was wounded; a beard like that takes months to grow. He stepped back and took another look about him.

There were two doors to the room. He thought he would go and prospect a bit. The need to know where he was and what had been happening took possession of him to the exclusion of everything else. With a glance at his bare legs, he pulled the coverlet off the bed and wrapped it about him. Then he turned the handle of the nearest door, opened it, and found himself looking through into another room.

It was a dining-room this time. There was a red carpet on the floor and red curtains at the windows. A bowl of snowdrops stood on a bare, polished table.

The man who had been Anton Blum nodded. Snowdrops—“I thought those trees looked like spring all right.” December—January—February—it must be at least February; and that meant that he had been knocked out for three months. He frowned again, spread out his hands, and looked at them. They were not the hands of a man who had been three months on the sick list. They were not his own hands as he remembered them. They were broad, blackened, horny; and every nail was broken, worn to the quick, and thickened at the edge; the palms were ridged with callosities. The muscles of his fore-arms stood out like cords.

He looked again about the quiet, empty room. There was a writing-table in the window, and a magazine thrown down carelessly on a chair beside it. He picked the paper up and turned the leaves. A page of pictures caught his eye—a young man; a smiling girl; and underneath: “The Duke and Duchess of York en route for——” The Duchess of York! There wasn’t any Duchess of York. What on earth were they gassing about? He looked up impatiently to the top of the page and saw the name of the paper, The Weekly Whisper, and the date, March the seventh, 1925.

March? So it was march. 1925? That was a misprint of course; it was 1915—November the fifteenth, 1915 was the last date he remembered. He stood there with his head bent forward over the paper, his mind fumbling with the figures. They came and went. November the fifteenth—March the seventh—1915—1925. It was as if he was leaning against a closed door. On the other side of the door things were happening; people were talking. He pushed against the door, and felt it give. In a moment it would open and he would see and hear. November—March—fifteen—twenty-five.

He gripped the paper in his hands, and a leaf fell over. Evelyn’s face looked at him, and he saw Evelyn’s name: “We all know Mrs Jim Laydon.” He read the paragraph right through; and then, with the ground slipping beneath his feet and a roaring noise in his ears, he began to read it again: “We all know Mrs Jim Laydon. Some of us remember her pretty, tragic wedding ten years ago.”

Evelyn! Time went by him. The roaring in his ears stopped; the floor was steady under his feet; the room was as still as a grave! Ten years! He had been dead ten years!

Ten years. Time and space were gone; all landmarks were gone. The shock was like the shock of some huge, shattering wave whose resistless force submerged and swept him into the unknown. After a timeless agony he felt the wave recede; and as it receded, it drew him with it, dragging him towards the abyss from which it had come. He began to resist, at first in a blind, confused flurry, then with increasing strength and clearing vision. The confusion began to pass; the sense of being drawn down into madness and chaos passed. He was left battered, but himself. As he lifted his head from that victory, he heard footsteps and voices that seemed to sound from a long way off. They came nearer. The door opened. He saw a face most blessedly familiar—Manning—it was Manning—good old Monkey Manning!