The Prussian Officer | Page 9

his hands. He did not relax one hair's
breadth, but, all the force of all his blood exulting in his thrust, he
shoved back the head of the other man, till there was a little cluck and a
crunching sensation. Then he felt as if his head went to vapour. Heavy
convulsions shook the body of the officer, frightening and horrifying
the young soldier. Yet it pleased him, too, to repress them. It pleased
him to keep his hands pressing back the chin, to feel the chest of the
other man yield in expiration to the weight of his strong, young knees,
to feel the hard twitchings of the prostrate body jerking his own whole
frame, which was pressed down on it.
But it went still. He could look into the nostrils of the other man, the
eyes he could scarcely see. How curiously the mouth was pushed out,
exaggerating the full lips, and the moustache bristling up from them.
Then, with a start, he noticed the nostrils gradually filled with blood.
The red brimmed, hesitated, ran over, and went in a thin trickle down
the face to the eyes.
It shocked and distressed him. Slowly, he got up. The body twitched
and sprawled there, inert. He stood and looked at it in silence. It was a
pity it was broken. It represented more than the thing which had kicked
and bullied him. He was afraid to look at the eyes. They were hideous
now, only the whites showing, and the blood running to them. The face
of the orderly was drawn with horror at the sight. Will, it was so. In his
heart he was satisfied. He had hated the face of the Captain. It was
extinguished now. There was a heavy relief in the orderly's soul. That
was as it should be. But he could not bear to see the long, military body
lying broken over the tree-base, the fine fingers crisped. He wanted to
hide it away.
Quickly, busily, he gathered it up and pushed it under the felled
tree-trunks, which rested their beautiful, smooth length either end on

logs. The face was horrible with blood. He covered it with the helmet.
Then he pushed the limbs straight and decent, and brushed the dead
leaves off the fine cloth of the uniform. So, it lay quite still in the
shadow under there. A little strip of sunshine ran along the breast, from
a chink between the logs. The orderly sat by it for a few moments. Here
his own life also ended.
Then, through his daze, he heard the lieutenant, in a loud voice,
explaining to the men outside the wood, that they were to suppose the
bridge on the river below was held by the enemy. Now they were to
march to the attack in such and such a manner. The lieutenant had no
gift of expression. The orderly, listening from habit, got muddled. And
when the lieutenant began it all again he ceased to hear. He knew he
must go. He stood up. It surprised him that the leaves were glittering in
the sun, and the chips of wood reflecting white from the ground. For
him a change had come over the world. But for the rest it had not--all
seemed the same. Only he had left it. And he could not go back, It was
his duty to return with the beer-pot and the bottle. He could not. He had
left all that. The lieutenant was still hoarsely explaining. He must go, or
they would, overtake him. And he could not bear contact with anyone
now.
He drew his fingers over his eyes, trying to find out where he was.
Then he turned away. He saw the horse standing in the path. He went
up to it and mounted. It hurt him to sit in the saddle. The pain of
keeping his seat occupied him as they cantered through the wood. He
would not have minded anything, but he could not get away from the
sense of being divided from the others. The path led out of the trees. On
the edge of the wood he pulled up and stood watching. There in the
spacious sunshine of the valley soldiers were moving in a little swarm.
Every now and then, a man harrowing on a strip of fallow shouted to
his oxen, at the turn. The village and the white-towered church was
small in the sunshine. And he no longer belonged to it--he sat there,
beyond, like a man outside in the dark. He had gone out from everyday
life into the unknown, and he could not, he even did not want to go
back.

Turning from the sun-blazing valley, he rode deep into the wood.
Tree-trunks, like people standing grey and still, took no notice