Aaron's Rod, D. H. Lawrence [book recommendations for young adults .TXT] 📗

and looked as if he was asleep. You couldn’t believe he was dead. But we pinned him up in his blanket. It was an awful shock to me. I couldn’t believe a man could be like that after he’d been dead two days. . . .

“The Germans were wonderful with the machine guns—it’s a wicked thing, a machine gun. But they couldn’t touch us with the bayonet. Every time the men came back they had bayonet practice, and they got awfully good. You know when you thrust at the Germans—so—if you miss him, you bring your rifle back sharp, with a round swing, so that the butt comes up and hits up under the jaw. It’s one movement, following on with the stab, you see, if you miss him. It was too quick for them— But bayonet charge was worst, you know. Because your man cries out when you catch him, when you get him, you know. That’s what does you. . . .

“No, oh no, this was no war like other wars. All the machinery of it. No, you couldn’t stand it, but for the men. The men are wonderful, you know. They’ll be wiped out. . . . No, it’s your men who keep you going, if you’re an officer. . . . But there’ll never be another war like this. Because the Germans are the only people who could make a war like this—and I don’t think they’ll ever do it again, do you?

“Oh, they were wonderful, the Germans. They were amazing. It was incredible, what they invented and did. We had to learn from them, in the first two years. But they were too methodical. That’s why they lost the war. They were too methodical. They’d fire their guns every ten minutes—regular. Think of it. Of course we knew when to run, and when to lie down. You got so that you knew almost exactly what they’d do—if you’d been out long enough. And then you could time what you wanted to do yourselves.

“They were a lot more nervous than we were, at the last. They sent up enough light at night from their trenches—you know, those things that burst in the air like electric light—we had none of that to do—they did it all for us—lit up everything. They were more nervous than we were. . . .”

It was nearly two o’clock when Herbertson left. Lilly, depressed, remained before the fire. Aaron got out of bed and came uneasily to the fire.

“It gives me the bellyache, that damned war,” he said.

“So it does me,” said Lilly. “All unreal.”

“Real enough for those that had to go through it.”

“No, least of all for them,” said Lilly sullenly. “Not as real as a bad dream. Why the hell don’t they wake up and realise it!”

“That’s a fact,” said Aaron. “They’re hypnotised by it.”

“And they want to hypnotise me. And I won’t be hypnotised. The war was a lie and is a lie and will go on being a lie till somebody busts it.”

“It was a fact—you can’t bust that. You can’t bust the fact that it happened.”

“Yes you can. It never happened. It never happened to me. No more than my dreams happen. My dreams don’t happen: they only seem.”

“But the war did happen, right enough,” smiled Aaron palely.

“No, it didn’t. Not to me or to any man, in his own self. It took place in the automatic sphere, like dreams do. But the ACTUAL MAN in every man was just absent—asleep—or drugged—inert—dream-logged. That’s it.”

“You tell ‘em so,” said Aaron.

“I do. But it’s no good. Because they won’t wake up now even—perhaps never. They’ll all kill themselves in their sleep.”

“They wouldn’t be any better if they did wake up and be themselves— that is, supposing they are asleep, which I can’t see. They are what they are—and they’re all alike—and never very different from what they are now.”

Lilly stared at Aaron with black eyes.

“Do you believe in them less than I do, Aaron?” he asked slowly.

“I don’t even want to believe in them.”

“But in yourself?” Lilly was almost wistful—and Aaron uneasy.

“I don’t know that I’ve any more right to believe in myself than in them,” he replied. Lilly watched and pondered.

“No,” he said. “That’s not true—I KNEW the war was false: humanly quite false. I always knew it was false. The Germans were false, we were false, everybody was false.”

“And not you?” asked Aaron shrewishly.

“There was a wakeful, self-possessed bit of me which knew that the war and all that horrible movement was false for me. And so I wasn’t going to be dragged in. The Germans could have shot my mother or me or what they liked: I wouldn’t have joined the WAR. I would like to kill my enemy. But become a bit of that huge obscene machine they called the war, that I never would, no, not if I died ten deaths and had eleven mothers violated. But I would like to kill my enemy: Oh, yes, more than one enemy. But not as a unit in a vast obscene mechanism. That never: no, never.”

Poor Lilly was too earnest and vehement. Aaron made a fine nose. It seemed to him like a lot of words and a bit of wriggling out of a hole.

“Well,” he said, “you’ve got men and nations, and you’ve got the machines of war—so how are you going to get out of it? League of Nations?”

“Damn all leagues. Damn all masses and groups, anyhow. All I want is to get MYSELF out of their horrible heap: to get out of the swarm. The swarm to me is nightmare and nullity—horrible helpless writhing in a dream. I want to get myself awake, out of it all—all that mass- consciousness, all that mass-activity—it’s the most horrible nightmare to me. No man is awake and himself. No man who was awake and in possession of himself would use poison gases: no man. His own awake self would scorn such a thing. It’s only when the ghastly mob-sleep, the dream helplessness of the mass-psyche overcomes him, that he becomes completely base and obscene.”

“Ha—well,” said Aaron. “It’s the wide-awake ones that invent the poison gas, and use it. Where should we be without it?”

Lilly started, went stiff and hostile.

“Do you mean that, Aaron?” he said, looking into Aaron’s face with a hard, inflexible look.

Aaron turned aside half sheepishly.

“That’s how it looks on the face of it, isn’t it?” he said.

“Look here, my friend, it’s too late for you to be talking to me about the face of things. If that’s how you feel, put your things on and follow Herbertson. Yes—go out of my room. I don’t put up with the face of things here.”

Aaron looked at him in cold amazement.

“It’ll do tomorrow morning, won’t it?” he asked rather mocking.

“Yes,” said Lilly coldly. “But please go tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, I’ll go all right,” said Aaron. “Everybody’s got to agree with you—that’s your price.”

But Lilly did not answer. Aaron turned into bed, his satirical smile under his nose. Somewhat surprised, however, at this sudden turn of affairs.

As he was just going to sleep, dismissing the matter, Lilly came once more to his bedside, and said, in a hard voice:

“I’m NOT going to pretend to have friends on the face of things. No, and I don’t have friends who don’t fundamentally agree with me. A friend means one who is at one with me in matters of life and death. And if you’re at one with all the rest, then you’re THEIR friend, not mine. So be their friend. And please leave me in the morning. You owe me nothing, you have nothing more to do with me. I have had enough of these friendships where I pay the piper and the mob calls the tune.

“Let me tell you, moreover, your heroic Herbertsons lost us more than ever they won. A brave ant is a damned cowardly individual. Your heroic officers are a sad sight AFTERWARDS, when they come home. Bah, your Herbertson! The only justification for war is what we learn from it. And what have they learnt?—Why did so many of them have presentiments, as he called it? Because they could feel inside them, there was nothing to come after. There was no life-courage: only death-courage. Nothing beyond this hell—only death or love— languishing—”

“What could they have seen, anyhow?” said Aaron.

“It’s not what you see, actually. It’s the kind of spirit you keep inside you: the life spirit. When Wallace had presentiments, Herbertson, being officer, should have said: ‘None of that, Wallace. You and I, we’ve got to live and make life smoke.’—Instead of which he let Wallace be killed and his own heart be broken. Always the death-choice— And we won’t, we simply will not face the world as we’ve made it, and our own souls as we find them, and take the responsibility. We’ll never get anywhere till we stand up man to man and face EVERYTHING out, and break the old forms, but never let our own pride and courage of life be broken.”

Lilly broke off, and went silently to bed. Aaron turned over to sleep, rather resenting the sound of so many words. What difference did it make, anyhow? In the morning, however, when he saw the other man’s pale, closed, rather haughty face, he realised that something had happened. Lilly was courteous and even affable: but with a curious cold space between him and Aaron. Breakfast passed, and Aaron knew that he must leave. There was something in Lilly’s bearing which just showed him the door. In some surprise and confusion, and in some anger, not unmingled with humorous irony, he put his things in his bag. He put on his hat and coat. Lilly was seated rather stiffly writing.

“Well,” said Aaron. “I suppose we shall meet again.”

“Oh, sure to,” said Lilly, rising from his chair. “We are sure to run across one another.”

“When are you going?” asked Aaron.

“In a few days’ time.”

“Oh, well, I’ll run in and see you before you go, shall I?”

“Yes, do.”

Lilly escorted his guest to the top of the stairs, shook hands, and then returned into his own room, closing the door on himself.

Aaron did not find his friend at home when he called. He took it rather as a slap in the face. But then he knew quite well that Lilly had made a certain call on his, Aaron’s soul: a call which he, Aaron, did not at all intend to obey. If in return the soul-caller chose to shut his street-door in the face of the world-friend—well, let it be quits. He was not sure whether he felt superior to his unworldly enemy or not. He rather thought he did.

CHAPTER XI

MORE PILLAR OF SALT

The opera season ended, Aaron was invited by Cyril Scott to join a group of