I saw, this time, the interior of a small white room, almost bare of
furniture, evidently a private room in some thoroughly appointed modern
hospital. The patient beneath the white coverlet of the single
white-enamelled iron bed was Susan--or the wraith of Susan, so wasted
was she, so still. My breath stopped: I thought it had been given me to
see her at the moment of death; or already dead. Then the door of the
small white room opened, and Jimmy--in his smart horizon-blue uniform
with its coveted shoulder loop, the green-and-red _fouragere_ that
bespoke the bravery of his entire _esquadrille_--came in, treading
carefully on the balls of his feet. As he approached the bedside Susan
opened her eyes--great shadows, gleamless soot-smudges in her pitifully
haggard face. It seemed that she was too weak even to greet him or
smile; her eyes closed again, and Jimmy bent down to her slowly and
kissed her. Then Susan lifted her right hand from the coverlet--I could
feel the effort it cost her--and touched Jimmy's hair. There was no
strength in her to prolong the caress. The hand slipped from him to her
breast.... And my vision ended.
Its close found me on my knees on the tiled floor of my bedroom, as if I
too had tried to go nearer, to bring myself close to her bedside,
perhaps to bury my face in my hands against the white coverlet, her
shroud; to weep there....
I sprang up, wildly enough now, with a harsh shudder, the terrified gasp
of a brute suddenly stricken from ambush, aware only of rooted claws and
a last crushing fury of deep-set fangs.
Susan was dying. I knew not where. I could not reach her. But Jimmy had
reached her. He had been summoned. He had not been too late.
There are moments of blind anguish not to be reproduced for others.
Chaos is everything--and nothing. It cannot be described.
There was nothing really useful I could do that night, not even sleep.
In those days, it was impossible to move anywhere on the railroads of
France without the proper passes and registrations of intention with the
military authorities and the local police. I could, of course,
suffer--that is always a human possibility--and I could attempt, muzzily
enough, to think, to make plans. Where was it most likely that Susan
would be? Was the hospital room that I had seen in Dunkirk, or in Nice,
or at some point between--perhaps at Paris? It could hardly, I decided,
be at Dunkirk; that stricken city, whose inhabitants were forced to dive
like rats into burrows at any hour of the day or night. There was
nothing to suggest the atmosphere of Dunkirk in that quiet,
white-enamelled room. Nice, then--or Mentone? Hardly, I again reasoned;
for Jimmy could not easily have reached them there. A day's leave; a
flight from the lines, so comfortlessly close to Paris--that was always
possible to the air-men, who were in a sense privileged characters,
being for the most part strung with taut nerves that chafed and snapped
under too strict a discipline. And in Paris there must be many such
quiet, white-enamelled rooms. I decided for Paris.
Then I threw five or six articles and a bar of chocolate into my
_musette_, a small water-proof pouch to sling over the shoulder--three
years had taught me at least the needlessness of almost all Hillhouse
necessities--and waited for dawn. It came, as all dawns come at
last--even in January, even in France. And with it came a gulp of black
coffee in the little deserted cafe down-stairs--and a telegram. I dared
not open the telegram. It lay beside my plate while I stained the cloth
before me and scalded my throat and furred my tongue. It was from Paris.
So my decision was justified, and now quite worthless.... I have no
memory of the interval; but I had got with it somehow back to my
room--that accursed blue envelope! Well----
"Susan at Red Cross hospital for civilians,
Neuilly. All in, but no cause for real worry. Is
sleeping now for first time in nearly a week. I
must leave by afternoon. Come up to her if you
possibly can. She needs you.
"JIMMY."
Four hours later all my exasperatingly complicated arrangements for a
two-weeks' absence were made--the requisite motions had been the purest
somnambulism--and by the ample margin of fifty seconds I had caught an
express--to do it that courtesy--moving with dignity, at decent
intervals, toward all that I lived by and despaired of and held
inviolably dear. But the irony of Jimmy's last three words went always
with me, a monotonous ache blurring every impulse toward hope and joy.
Susan was not dead, was not dying! "No cause for real worry." Jimmy
would not have said that if he had feared the worst. It was not his way
to shuffle with facts; he was by nature direct and sincere. No; Susan
would recover--thank God for it! Thank--and then, under all, through
all, over and over, that aching monotony: "She needs you. Jimmy. She
needs you. Jimmy."
"Needs me!" I groaned aloud.
"_Plait-il?_" politely murmured the harassed-looking little French
captain, my vis-a-vis.
"_Mille pardons, monsieur_," I murmured back. "_On a quelquefois des
griefs particuliers, vous savez._"
"_Ah dame, oui!_" he sighed. "_Par le temps qui court!_"
"_Et ce pachyderme de train qui ne court jamais!_" I smiled.
"_Ah, pour ca--ca repose!_" murmured the little French captain, and shut
his eyes.
"She needs you. Jimmy. She needs you. Jimmy. She needs----"
Then, miraculously, for two blotted hours I slept. But I woke again,
utterly unrefreshed, to the old refrain: _She needs you--needs
you--needs you...._
The little French captain was still asleep, snoring now--but softly--in
his corner. Ah, lucky little French captain! _Ca repose!_