Where the Path Breaks

								

of his life, of course, because the dream had begun again, and was
carrying him on to a wedding. The church in the village ... (he knew
that church well, and the way to it from the big gates and the little
gates; the long way and the short cut) ... The girl, and a man in khaki
were standing together ... the same ugly man, uglier than ever in his
soldier clothes, he thought. He heard the words which a clergyman in a
white surplice was reading out of the prayer book. "To have and to
hold, till death do you part." And he saw himself putting a ring on the
girl's finger. She held her left hand out to him--the long, slim hand
he used to think must be like St. Cecilia's, because of the genius of
music in its finger tips. He could see no following picture of her
alone with him. He saw himself going away, waving good-by: then a train
and a boat, and a train again, with a crowd of other men, all soldiers.
He was an officer. (He had left the army before that dream-time, he
could not remember why, but it had something to do with money--and with
the black and white house: and he had offered himself again for the
war.) In the dream he rode a horse along a straight sunlit road, with
poplars on either side that gave no shade. There were days of marching
in furnace heat. Then came a night of silver moonlight reddened by
fire; a village burning. There was a noise as of hell let loose: and
since he had been dead he hated noise. It was the one unbearable thing.
Hearing noise in his dream, the star which was his soul shattered
itself into a thousand sparks, each spark a red-hot nerve of pain. All
round him in the crowded dream there was fighting. Smoke stung his
eyelids. He breathed it in, and choked. His horse trampled men down.
Their cries were in his ears. Some voice he knew called to him for
help. He pulled a man up on his horse; a friend, he thought it was,
some one he cared for. Now the horse stopped, reared, and fell. By and
by the man whose soul dreamed, struggled to his feet, dazed, but
remembering his friend dragged him from under the hurt animal. Helmets
glittered in the moonlight. Eyes glinted red in the copper glare. He
fought with a sword and kept off men that pressed on him and his
friend, trying to kill them both. A stab of pain shot through his hand.
A bugle sounded. Men were running away. He thought they were men of the
enemy; a stream of helmets going. He heard his own voice shout an
order, but before it could be obeyed a din as of mountains rent asunder
roared his voice down. His whole being was swallowed up as a raindrop
is swallowed in a cataract. A huge round shape rushed towards him,
black against moonlight and flame. Then the world burst and tore him in
a million fragments....
His soul coming back to knowledge of its continuance held the
impression that this rending anguish of death had been long, long ago,
thousands of years ago in time: and that he was now or soon would be