The Prussian Officer | Page 5

"I had been writing."
"Writing what?"
Again the soldier looked him up and down. The officer could hear him
panting. The smile came into the blue eyes. The soldier worked his dry
throat, but could not speak. Suddenly the smile lit like a name on the
officer's face, and a kick came heavily against the orderly's thigh. The
youth moved a pace sideways. His face went dead, with two black,
staring eyes.
"Well?" said the officer.

The orderly's mouth had gone dry, and his tongue rubbed in it as on dry
brown-paper. He worked his throat. The officer raised his foot. The
servant went stiff.
"Some poetry, sir," came the crackling, unrecognizable sound of his
voice.
"Poetry, what poetry?" asked the Captain, with a sickly smile.
Again there was the working in the throat. The Captain's heart had
suddenly gone down heavily, and he stood sick and tired.
"For my girl, sir," he heard the dry, inhuman sound.
"Oh!" he said, turning away. "Clear the table."
"Click!" went the soldier's throat; then again, "click!" and then the
hail-articulate: "Yes, sir."
The young soldier was gone, looking old, and walking heavily.
The officer, left alone, held himself rigid, to prevent himself from
thinking. His instinct warned him that he must not think. Deep inside
him was the intense gratification of his passion, still working
powerfully. Then there was a counter-action, a horrible breaking down
of something inside him, a whole agony of reaction. He stood there for
an hour motionless, a chaos of sensations, but rigid with a will to keep
blank his consciousness, to prevent his mind grasping. And he held
himself so until the worst of the stress had passed, when he began to
drink, drank himself to an intoxication, till he slept obliterated. When
he woke in the morning he was shaken to the base of his nature. But he
had fought off the realization of what he had done. He had prevented
his mind from taking it in, had suppressed, it along with his instincts,
and the conscious man had nothing to do with it. He felt only as after a
bout of intoxication, weak, but the affair itself all dim and not to be
recovered. Of the drunkenness of his passion he successfully refused
remembrance. And when his orderly appeared with coffee, the officer
assumed the same self he had had the morning before. He refused the

event of the past night--denied it had ever been--and was successful in
his denial. He had not done any such thing--not he himself. Whatever
there might be lay at the door of a stupid, insubordinate servant.
The orderly had gone about in a stupor all the evening. He drank some
beer because he was parched, but not much, the alcohol made his
feeling come back, and he could not bear it. He was dulled, as if
nine-tenths of the ordinary man in him were inert. He crawled about
disfigured. Still, when he thought of the kicks, he went sick, and when
he thought of the threat of more kicking, in the room afterwards, his
heart went hot and faint, and he panted, remembering the one that had
come. He had been forced to say, "For my girl." He was much too done
even to want to cry. His mouth hung slightly open, like an idiot's. He
felt vacant, and wasted. So, he wandered at his work, painfully, and
very slowly and clumsily, fumbling blindly with the brushes, and
finding it difficult, when he sat down, to summon the energy to move
again. His limbs, his jaw, were slack and nerveless. But he was very
tired. He got to bed at last, and slept inert, relaxed, in a sleep that was
rather stupor than slumber, a dead night of stupefaction shot through
with gleams of anguish.
In the morning were the manoeuvres. But he woke even before the
bugle sounded. The painful ache in his chest, the dryness of his throat,
the awful steady feeling of misery made his eyes come awake and
dreary at once. He knew, without thinking, what had happened. And he
knew that the day had come again, when he must go on with his round.
The last bit of darkness was being pushed out of the room. He would
have to move his inert body and go on. He was so young, and had
known so little trouble, that he was bewildered. He only wished it
would stay night, so that he could lie still, covered up by the darkness.
And yet nothing would prevent the day from coming, nothing would
save him from having to get up and saddle the Captain's horse, and
make the Captain's coffee. It was there, inevitable. And then, he
thought, it was impossible. Yet they would not leave him free. He